UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
LOS  ANGELES 


u 


FOUR   AND    FIVE 


TEN  TIMES  ONE  SERIES 


FOUR  AND  FIVE 


Storg  of  a  3Unfca=1toii  Clufr 


BY 


EDWARD   E.   HALE 

AUTHOR  OF  "TEN  TIMES  ONE  is  TEN,"  "MRS.  MERRIAM'S  SCHOLARS," 

"  HOW  TO  DO  IT,"   "  IMo  HI^  ^lAME^'n  AND  OTHEIl  JVCK^S     „  '  ^ 


BOSTON 

ROBERTS  BROTHERS 
1891 


Copyright,  1892, 
BY  ROBERTS  BROTHERS. 


Knfijttst 
K  BY  JOHN  WILSON  AND  SON, 
CAMBRIDGE,  U.S.A. 


fs, 


rn 


FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


CHAPTER  I. 

'Tr^HE  FOUR  were  all  boys— well  grown 
up,  but  still  boys — who  had  a  camp  to- 
gether one  summer  in  one  of  the  Cloves  of 
the  Kaatskills.  September  was  coming  on, 
and  they  knew  they  should  have  to  break 
camp  soon.  But,  all  the  more,  they  made  the 
best  of  each  hour,  and  were  more  apt  than 
ever  to  talk  of  improved  plans  for  the  next 
year. 

It  was  after  supper;  Harrison,  who  was 
cook  for  the  week,  had  cleared  away  his  egg- 
shells and  washed  his  platters ;  John,  who 
was  axeman,  had  piled  some  new  logs  upon 
the  fire,  and  the  four  lay,  or  sat,  watching  the 
pillar  of  smoke  above  and  the  embers  below, 

(5) 


484070 

LIBRARY 


FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


Nothing  is  so  fascinating,  and  in  such  condi- 
tions is  the  best  sleep  in  the  world  secured, 
and  the  best  work  done. 

"Yes;  we  want  four  other  fellows,  but 
they  must  be  of  the  right  kind.  Then  we 
could  have  one  more  canoe.  We  would  buy 
that  birch  I  saw  at  Portland.  I  would  write 
my  cousin  about  it.  Then  if  everybody  did 
not  want  to  go  out  together,  we  could  leave 
somebody  at  home  to  be  ready  for  supper. 
It  would  be  cheaper  and  better." 

"We  must  have  just  the  right  fellows.  A 
mean  hog  or  a  lazy  dog  would  just  spoil  the 
whole.  One  bad  egg  in  a  cake  is  as  bad  as 
five."  This  was  the  professional  simile  of 
Harrison. 

"Right  you  are  there,"  said  Guthrie. 
"  The  trouble  is,  you  must  be  secret  as  death 
about  it.  You  must  not  say  that  anybody  is 
to  be  counted  in,  for  fear  the  wrong  man 
should  volunteer,  and  that  you  will  not  dare 
say  '  no '  to  him.  I  know  one  first-rate  f el- 
low,— if  he  will  come." 


FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


"Who  is  he?" 

"Well,  perhaps  none  of  you  know  him. 
We  used  to  call  him  Beechnut,  because  he 
was  so  like  that  fellow  that  knew  everything 
in  the  book.  But  that  is  nothing.  We  know 
enough  to  keep  out  of  the  fire — if  we  do  not 
always  keep  out  of  the  water.  But  Ike  is 
such  a  good  fellow !  If  you  are  on  a  tramp 
he  does  not  squawk,  nor  want  to  get  a  stone 
out  of  his  boot.  He  never  says  his  pack 
swings  wrong  unless  it  does.  He  is  always 
willing  to  take  the  worst  end  of  the  stick  if 
there  is  any.  Well,  he  does  know  more  than 
I  do  about  weirs  and  traps  and  water-sheds — 
and  pitch  and  rosin  and  wax — and  birch  and 
hemlock  and  yew — and  lots  of  things.  But, 
you  know,  it  is  not  what  a  fellow  knows  that 
makes  you  like  him." 

"I  guess  not,"  groaned  Harrison,  with 
some  memory  which  was  evidently  very  bit- 
ter. "  There  is  a  fellow  in  our  school  who 
lived  in  France  and  can  talk  French  ;  he  went 
to  an  English  school  and  knows  all  about 


8  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

commas  and  semi-colons.  He  is  down  on 
you  if  you  spell  compel  with  two  1's  ;  and,  do 
you  know,  fellows,  he  knows  so  much  that  I 
go  back  and  pretend  I  have  left  something, 
so  that  I  may  be  sure  that  if  he  walks  home 
by  the  north  road,  I  go  by  the  meadow.  I 
wouldn't  know  so  much  as  that  fellow  knows 
for  all  the  world." 

There  was  no  great  danger  that  Harrison 
would  be  overburdened  by  his  stock  of  book- 
learning,  so  that  all  the  others  laughed  good- 
naturedly  at  his  groans.  But  they  all  under- 
stood what  he  meant,  and  agreed  that  they 
would  not  mind  if  the  fellows  in  the  new  club 
spelled  or  wrote  a  poor  hand,  if  only  they 
were  good  fellows  and  knew  how  to  lend  a 
hand  in  emergency. 

"  Well,  we  have  talked  enough,"  said 
Guthrie,  "  and  now  we  must  turn  in.  But  all 
I  say  is  that  these  four  new  fellows  must  look 
up  and  not  down,  forward  and  not  backward, 
out  and  not  in,  and  must  lend  a  hand." 

And  this  was  the  only  solemn    conclave 


FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


which  was  ever  held  on  the  subject  of  admit- 
ting the  new  fellows  into  the  club.  Before  a 
great  while  everything  had  to  be  packed  up, 
the  tents  had  to  be  corded,  the  canoe  to  be 
carried  across  to  Arnold's,  where  a  team 
should  take  it  to  the  railroad,  the  old  tomato 
cans  which  had  done  duty  in  forty  ways  had 
to  be  buried  in  the  ground,  and  what  little 
there  was  of  the  stores  had  to  be  carried 
down  to  Tom  Slocum's  and  presented,  with 
the  courtesies  of  the  young  camp-followers, 
to  the  people  there  who  had  been  good  to 
them.  All  there  was  settled  was,  that  when 
they  came  next  year,  they  should  come  eight 
strong.  They  went  to  three  different  schools, 
and  it  was  possible  that  they  might  pick  up 
new  recruits  there.  John  was  to  go  to  South 
America  with  his  father,  and  there  was  no 
saying  how  many  cousins  of  Friday  or  of  the 
Spaniard  he  might  find  in  that  expedition. 
Nobody  cared  whether  the  new  members 
were  white,  black,  green,  or  gray,  if  only 
they  were  reliable.  And  so  there  were  good 


10  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

hopes  of  two  canoes  instead  of  one,  of  a  new 
tent,  and,  indeed,  of  many  other  accessories 
which  were  necessary  to  the  comfort  of  the 
concern. 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  II 


CHAPTER  II. 

A  CCORDINGLY,  when  the  middle  of 
June  came  around,  Guthrie,  who  was 
the  head-centre  of  this  combination,  living 
not  far  from  Poughkeepsie,  and  able  to  man- 
age things  better  than  the  others,  found  that 
there  were,  indeed,  four  fellows  who  were 
confidently  approved  as  willing  to  stand  by 
the  four  mottoes,  who  were  going  to  come 
into  camp  with  them.  Oddly  enough,  one  of 
these  fellows  was  from  South  America,  and 
from  the  very  first  the  boys  nicknamed  him 
Friday,  in  memory  of  Robinson  Crusoe's 
companion.  He  spoke  Spanish  quite  as  well 
as  he  did  English,  and  had  excellent  stories 
to  tell  of  life  out  on  the  plains  with  the  cattle- 
drivers  there.  His  father  was  a  Scotchman 
who  had  been  a  banker  in  Montevideo,  and 
had  there  married  an  American  lady,  so  that 


12  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

"Friday"  had  been  sent  north  on  the  same 
steamer  with  John,  when  he  returned  from 
his  wonderful  winter's  outing. 

One  of  the  other  boys  was  the  son  of  a 
Colorado  ranchman,  and  he  and  Friday  used 
to  compare  notes  on  the  handling  of  a  lasso 
and  the  riding  of  a  horse,  but  as  there  was 
neither  lasso  nor  horse  nor  buffalo  nor  ox 
within  ten  miles  of  the  camp  there  was  not 
so  much  chance  to  make  practical  compari- 
son. For  the  other  two  boys,  Will  Wickham 
and  Nelson  French,  as  the  story  goes  on,  the 
reader  will  see  and  know  more  of  them.  All 
except  Harrison  met  in  the  train  at  Brom- 
wich ;  they  took  each  other's  measure  in  a 
minute,  and  after  that  minute  needed  no 
further  introduction. 

Harrison  arrived  the  next  day.  On  the 
whole,  he  approved  of  the  changes  which  had 
been  made  in  the  camp.  He  had  got  some 
light  on  the  lines  of  camp-life,  he  said,  by  a 
visit  he  had  made  in  the  Adirondacks,  and 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  13 

he  was  sure  he  knew  a  great  deal  more  about 
canoeing. 

Their  first  night  was  a  cold  one,  which  was 
a  good  test  of  Friday's  staying  abilities,  see- 
ing that  he  had  never  known  what  a  northern 
winter  was.  But  there  was  plenty  of  wood, 
and  the  fire  was  well  built  by  the  old  campers, 
who  readily  yielded  the  best  places  to  the 
new-comers,  and  taught  them  the  laws  of 
screening  themselves  from  smoke  and  wind. 

"  What  do  you  fellows  mean,"  said  Friday, 
"when  you  talk  about  the  four  rules?  I 
know  what  they  are — John  told  me — but 
where  did  they  come  from  anyway  ? " 

Harrison  explained  that  the  four  mottoes 
were  simply  a  way  of  showing  how  a  fellow 
is  glad  to  live, — that  he  looks  up  because  he 
does  not  believe  that  he  can  get  along  with- 
out some  law  from  somebody  who  knows 
more  about  it  than  he  does ;  that  he  looks 
forward  because  he  expects  to  be  something 
better  than  he  is ;  that  he  looks  out  because 
he  would  not  be  so  mean  as  to  eat  the  whole 


14  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

of  his  apple  and  not  give  half  to  the  other 
fellow;  and  that  he  lends  a  hand — well, 
because  he  must.  "  You  ought  to  know  all 
about  that,  Friday;  you  ought  to  recollect 
how  badly  Robinson  Crusoe  got  along  before 
you  stumbled  in  on  him."  And  then  all  the 
boys  laughed,  and  Friday  said  that  they  must 
give  him  a  copy  of  Robinson  Crusoe  to  read, 
the  first  time  he  was  alone ;  he  was  really 
the  only  boy  of  the  set  who  did  not  know  ex- 
actly what  they  were  talking  about.  Then 
Guthrie  went  on  and  explained  farther  that, 
in  the  book  in  which  the  four  mottoes  were 
put  down,  it  was  supposed  that  ten  people 
believed  in  them  so  thoroughly  that  each  of 
them  made  a  club  of  ten,  so  that,  at  the  end 
of  three  years,  there  were  a  hundred  such 
people ;  at  the  end  of  three  years  more  there 
were  a  thousand  such  people,  and  before 
thirty  years  were  over  it  turned  out  that  all 
the  world  was  living  in  faith  and  hope  and 
love ;  that  is,  that  all  the  world  was  looking 


FOUR  AND   FIVE.  IS 

up,  was  looking  forward,  and  was  looking 
outside  themselves. 

"  I  am  not  so  sure  of  all  the  world,"  said 
Nelson  ;  "but  I  am  glad  that  there  are  eight 
of  us,  and  not  one.  I  should  not  like  to  have 
to  get  up  in  the  middle  of  the  night  and 
build  up  this  fire,  while  I  am  quite  willing  to 
get  up  at  five  o'clock  to-morrow  morning  and 
take  my  share  for  an  hour." 

Guthrie  said  that  the  standard  story  in 
the  clubs  is  a  story  of  the  war.  He  said  the 
soldiers  used  to  have  India  rubber  shelter 
blankets  that  were  six  feet  square.  Now  if  a 
man  was  a  selfish  dog  he  lay  down  on  the 
ground  and  made  himself  a  tent,  say  two 
feet  and  a  half  high,  with  each  side  of  the 
roof  three  feet  wide  and  six  feet  long.  That 
was  all  he  could  do ;  that  is,  he  doubled  his 
India  rubber  cloth  in  the  middle  and  stretched 
it  over  a  rail  above  him.  But  if  two  fellows 
were  good  natured  enough  to  live  together, 
they  buttoned  their  blankets  together,  they 
put  their  rail  twice  as  high  as  the  other  man 


i6 


FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


did,  and  each  side  of  their  roof  was  six  feet 
from  the  ridgepole  to  the  ground.  If  three 
men  came  together  they  could  have  one  India 
rubber  cloth  on  the  ground  under  them  to  lie 
upon,  and  if  four  came  together  they  could 
button  an  India  rubber  cloth  across  one  end 
to  keep  the  wind  out.  Every  one  of  the  four 
was  four  times  as  comfortable  as  he  would 
have  been  if  he  had  been  sulky  and  had 
been  alone.  And  on  this  story  all  went  to 
sleep  but  Harrison,  who  had  the  first  turn  at 
the  fire. 

The  next  morning  they  left  everything 
behind  them,  trusting  to  the  honesty  of  the 
region,  to  take  a  long  tramp,  part  of  it  by  a 
spotted  trail,  which  would  bring  them  out  on 
the  highest  summit  of  Kaatskill.  The  rule 
in  the  woods  is  that  each  one  of  the  party 
shall  lead  for  an  hour.  It  is  so  much  pleas- 
anter  to  be  in  the  lead,  it  is  so  much  more 
animating,  that  it  is  not  thought  fair  that  one 
person  shall  have  all  the  fun  or  the  inspira- 
tion. So,  if  there  is  a  party  of  ten  lumber- 


FOUR  AND  FIVE 


men,  each  one  of  the  party  takes  his  lead  for 
an  hour,  if  they  tramp  ten  hours  a  day.  In 
this  case  the  "  old  boys  "  took  the  lead  for 
the  first  hours,  and  the  others  followed,  will- 
ingly enough,  learning  something  at  every 
minute  about  woodcraft,  and  surprised  at 
seeing  things  which  they  had  never  thought 
of  before.  It  would  have  been  better,  per- 
haps, if  they  had  all  remembered  how  puz- 
zling the  woods  are  to  a  new-comer.  But  the 
new-comers  did  not  know  this,  and  the  others 
had  forgotten  it.  And  so  it  was  that  their 
first  adventure  came  about.  It  did  not  occur 
to  anybody  that  Friday  was  last  on  the  trail. 
It  had  occurred  to  them  that  he  would  not 
be  so  much  used  to  it,  and  he  had,  therefore, 
nothing  heavy  to  carry.  He  had  a  light 
blanket  in  which  there  had  been  a  loaf  of 
bread  rolled  up,  which  was  swung  across  his 
shoulder.  You  lay  the  loaf  of  bread  on  the 
corner  of  the  blanket  and  roll  and  roll  and 
roll  ;  you  take  the  opposite  corner  and  roll 
and  roll  and  roll,  till  you  have  a  straight 
2 


1 8  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

blanket  like  an  immense  cigar,  biggest  in  the 
middle.  Then  you  twist  the  two  ends  against 
each  other  till  you  make  it  a  rope  as  much  as 
you  can,  and  you  tie  this  rope  over  one  shoul- 
der, with  the  knot  in  front.  This  is  an  easy 
way  to  carry  both  the  blanket  and  anything 
else  you  have  to  carry,  while  your  arms  are 
free.  Friday  had  begged  that  he  might  be 
permitted  to  carry  one  of  the  hatchets,  or  a 
great  hammer  which  they  had  to  crack  off 
stones  with,  or  one  of  the  plant  boxes  ;  but 
the  other  boys  had  said  that  he  had  quite 
enough  for  his  first  tramp,  so  that  this  was 
all  that  was  assigned  to  him. 

The  boy  was  wide  awake,  everything  was 
new  to  him.  Hardly  a  bush  or  flower  or  in- 
sect or  toad  or  snake  or  bird  was  like  any- 
thing which  he  had  ever  seen  before.  It  was 
almost  of  course  that  he  should  stop,  once 
and  again,  to  look  at  something  which  looked 
curious  and  new,  and  then  run  up  behind  to 
overtake  Guthrie,  who  was  next  in  advance. 
To  tell  the  truth,  it  was  almost  as  much  of 


FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


course  that  he  loitered  once  a  little  too  long, 
and  running  on  after  Guthrie  did  not  find 
him,  calling  out  for  him  received  no  answer, 
and  of  a  sudden  was  sure  that  he  was  lost. 


2O  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


CHAPTER  III. 

l^RIDAY  had  not  been  born  in  the  woods 
to  be  scared  by  an  owl.  Or,  to  interpret 
this  proverb,  he  had  not  been  used  to  ranch 
life  on  the  plains  in  the  Argentine,  that  he 
should  now  be  scared  because  he  found  him- 
self alone  in  a  forest.  But  ranch  life  on  the 
plains  gave  him  as  little  experience  for  trac- 
ing a  trail  in  the  woods,  as  if  it  had  been  the 
life  of  a  seamstress  in  the  twelfth  story  of  a 
clothing  manufactory. 

The  boy  found  he  was  alone,  and,  once  or 
twice,  hailed  his  companions  loudly,  but  he 
got  no  answer.  A  person  not  used  to  woods 
hardly  understands  how  short  is  the  distance 
over  which,  in  certain  winds  and  weathers,  the 
human  voice  will  "  carry."  This  is  the  artist 
phrase.  In  fact  Guthrie  did  hear  Friday's 
first  call,  and  replied.  But  Friday  did  not 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  21 

hear  the  answer.  After  a  little  Friday  made 
an  Indian  warwhoop,  slapping  his  mouth  with 
his  hand  as  the  others  had  taught  him.  But 
this  signal  Guthrie  never  heard. 

Sure  that  he  was  not  heard,  Friday  ran 
back — as  fast  as  one  can  run  in  a  forest  path 
—to  be  sure  that  he  had  not  taken  the  wrong 
track  at  a  point  where  a  cord  or  two  of  wood 
had  been  cut  and  piled.  Thus  he  lost  time, 
and  he  knew  he  lost  time.  When  he  came 
there  he  was  quite  sure  that  he  had  been  on 
the  right  path  all  the  time,  and  he  retraced 
his  steps,  thus  going  over  the  same  route  three 
times  for  perhaps  three  hundred  yards.  The 
boy's  wind  was  good,  and  where  he  could  run 
he  ran.  He  was  sure  that  he  made  much 
better  time  than  they  made  all  together,  but 
it  was  quite  clear  to  him  at  the  end  of  an  hour 
that  he  and  the  rest  were  parted.  He  had 
read  Cooper's  novels,  and  other  such  books  of 
instruction,  enough  to  know  that  he  ought  to 
be  able  to  track  Guthrie  by  the  traces  he  had 
left  in  the  leaves,  mosses,  or  occasionally  the 


22  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

sand  at  brooksides.  But  no  such  traces  were 
to  be  seen,  and  poor  Friday  wondered  whether 
he  were  stupid,  or  were  quite  lost ;  willing, 
indeed,  to  be  convicted  of  stupidity  if  he  could 
only  make  sure  that  the  others  were  not  far 
away. 

He  was  more  troubled,  in  truth,  by  remem- 
bering that  he  carried  with  him  the  bread  for 
the  rest  of  the  party  than  he  was  by  any  fear 
for  himself.  Indeed,  no  such  fear  crossed 
him.  He  knew  enough  of  midday  camping, 
and  of  the  hunger  of  all  concerned,  to  know 
that  their  dinner  of  salt  pork,  even  if  they 
patched  it  out  with  a  few  trout,  would  lack 
the  civilized  comfort  of  bread  or  toast.  But 
after  he  knew  he  had  lost  an  hour  in  tramping 
backward  and  forward,  it  was  clear  that  his 
best  effort  would  be  to  get  back  again  to  the 
camp  from  which  they  had  started.  Certainly 
he  could  not  overtake  the  others  now,  even 
had  he  known,  as  he  did  not,  where  they  were 
going. 

It  would  be  idle  to  say  by  what  turns,  some 


FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


right  and  some  wrong,  he  confused  himself. 
He  had  the  general  sense  of  the  direction  in 
which  they  were  marching,  for  he  was  too 
good  a  ranchero  not  to  have  noticed  the 
shadows  which  the  sun  gave  in  the  morning, 
and  he  had  known  that  they  were  going  north- 
northwest  a  little  west  on  their  average  track. 
But  by  eleven  o'clock  a  haze  had  come  over 
the  whole  sky,  and,  do  the  best  he  could,  he 
could  not  make  out  where  the  sun  was  hidden 
behind  the  clouds.  Indeed,  when  a  little 
drizzling  rain  began,  all  indications  of  north, 
south,  east,  or  west  were  blotted  out  from  him. 
And  he  came  to  his  worst  dilemma  when,  af- 
ter he  had  pushed  along  on  a  bit  of  wood-road 
which  seemed  quite  well-defined,  he  found,  to 
his  dismay,  his  own  foot-print,  facing  in  the 
opposite  direction,  in  a  little  spot  of  mud 
which  he  remembered,  and  knew  that  he  was 
actually  returning  on  the  course  which  he  had 
followed  before.  This  was  indeed  to  be  com- 
pletely lost. 

The  boy,  however,  lost  courage  in  no  way. 


24  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

He  knew  the  general  flow  of  the  mountain 
brooks  well  enough  to  know  that  they  would 
bring  him  down  to  some  stream  where  there 
would  be  a  wood-road  and  some  inhabitants. 
And  now  that  he  had  given  up  all  hope  of 
joining  the  rest  of  the  party,  he  simply  took 
a  general  down-hill  direction,  meaning  to  fol- 
low the  first  brook  he  found,  even  if  it  went 
to  the  Atlantic  Ocean.  He  did  reflect,  with 
some  dissatisfaction,  that  he  had  no  matches, 
for  he  knew  that  if  he  had  to  spend  the  night 
in  the  woods  the  question  of  a  watch-fire  was 
important. 

All  such  doubts,  however,  dispelled  them- 
selves before  two  o'clock  in  the  afternoon. 
He  had  unrolled  the  blanket,  cut  himself  off 
a  good  junk  of  bread,  rolled  up  what  was  left 
lest  he  should  need  it  more,  and  was  munch- 
ing upon  the  ration  which  he  had  secured, 
when  he  came  out  on  a  wood-road  much  more 
worn  than  these  little  trails  he  had  been  fol- 
lowing. Where  it  came  from,  and  where  it 
went  to,  he  had  no  idea,  nor  could  he  tell  at 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  2$ 

first  which  was  the  ascending  and  which  was 
the  descending  grade.  But  he  ran  along, 
perhaps  half  a  mile  in  eac'h  direction,  till  he 
came  to  a  theory  on  this  subject, — which,  by 
the  way,  proved  afterwards  to  be  wrong.  He 
then  returned  to  his  original  plan  of  descend- 
ing, and  marched  at  quickstep  on  what  he 
supposed  to  be  the  "route  to  the  sea,"  as  he 
determined  he  would  say  in  his  journal.  There 
was  now  no  difficulty  in  following  any  trail. 
Friday  had  had  quite  enough  of  that,  and  had 
followed  trails,  from  his  Cooper-bred  informa- 
tion, to  his  ruin,  as  he  knew.  But  there  was 
a  strange  curiosity  in  marching  on  one  hour, 
two  hours,  without  any  more  sign  of  the  hand 
of  man  than  an  occasional  pile  of  logs  in  some 
place  where  the  wood  had  been  thinned  out, 
and  the  wood-cutters  had  not  returned  to  carry 
off  their  cargo.  In  two  full  hours  of  such  walk- 
ing Friday  thought  he  had  made  five  miles. 
This  was  his  mistake  ;  distances  stretch  them- 
selves to  such  ignorant  explorers  as  he,  and 
in  fact  he  had  gone  hardly  three  miles  on  this 


26  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

road-way  when,  to  his  relief,  he  heard  the  noise 
of  dogs,  the  crowing  of  cocks,  the  cackling  of 
hens,  the  gabble  of  ducks,  all  at  one  moment, 
as  if  he  had  stumbled  in  upon  a  large  farm. 
He  even  ran  when  he  heard  these  sounds,  and 
came  out  on  the  roughest  clearing  which  he 
had  ever  seen.  There  were  great  stumps, 
black  with  charcoal ;  there  were  immense 
bunches  of  newly  started  Canada  thistles ; 
there  were  logs  helter  skelter,  which  had  been 
burned  as  soon  as  they  had  been  felled  ;  there 
was  every  mark  of  the  insult  which  man  in- 
flicts upon  nature  when  he  first  touches  na- 
ture. There  were  two  or  three  dogs  gathering 
round  him  and  howling  ;  there  were  hens  and 
chickens  rushing  madly  in  different  directions ; 
but  what  was  most  to  Friday's  purpose,  there 
was  a  log  cabin,  by  far  the  simplest  he  had 
yet  seen,  with  smoke  curling  from  the  chim- 
ney. At  least  he  knew  now  that  he  should 
find  out  where  he  was  and  where  he  had  to  go. 
Nor  was  he  sorry  for  this,  for  he  was  tired 
with  walking,  and  though  he  had  persuaded 


FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


himself  that  his  noon-day  ration  was  enough, 
the  boy  was  really  hungry  without  knowing  it. 
As  he  approached  the  door  a  witch  came 
out,  —  or  so  he  thought,  in  his  book-bred 
fancies.  She  was  black  by  nature,  and  her 
clothes  were  black  with  dirt.  Her  face  was 
black,  her  hands  were  black,  and  her  feet  were 
black,  though  she  had  no  shoes  on.  Her  hair, 
however,  was  white,  for  this  was  an  old  negro 
woman,  who,  as  Friday  found  in  a  minute,  was 
quite  alone.  It  did  not  take  him  long  to  ex- 
plain what  had  befallen  him,  but  it  did  take 
her  a  long  time  to  understand  his  explanation  ; 
and  to  this  day  she  tells  the  story,  wondering 
how  the  boy  managed  to  cross  the  well-marked 
watershed  which  separated  his  valley  from 
hers.  But  she  met  him  with  that  exuberant 
hospitality  with  which  a  lonely  settler  receives 
any  adventurer,  of  any  race,  any  color  ;  indeed, 
one  might  say,  any  number  of  legs  or  wings. 
In  truth,  it  was  a  month  since  Friday's  old 
witch  had  spoken  to  a  human  being.  She  had 
spoken  aloud  in  ejaculatory  prayers  to  the  good 


28  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

God,  she  had  said  fond  things  to  her  cats  and 
kittens,  she  had  said  cross  things  to  her  hens 
and  ducks,  she  had  addressed  philosophical 
remarks  to  her  pigs ;  but  there  had  been  no 
man,  woman,  or  child  to  whom  she  had  ad- 
dressed articulate  language  since  that  time. 
Now  man  is  a  social  animal,  and  he  hungers 
for  society ; — "what  is  it  all  for,"  as  Mr.  Em- 
erson says,  "but  a  little  conversation  ?  " — so 
that,  when  poor  Friday  appeared,  footsore  and 
worried,  he  met  with  a  most  cordial  reception 
from  the  fellow-being  who,  in  his  imagination, 
was  but  a  Voodoo  witch.  While  he  was  half 
afraid  of  her,  her  heart  went  forth  to  him. 

She  was  eager  to  show  that  all  was  not  des- 
olation, but  that  there  were  some  emblems  of 
civilization  even  in  her  cabin.  She  had  the 
wit  to  know,  however,  that  the  world  out-doors 
was  more  attractive  than  that  within.  She 
did  not  so  much  as  ask  him  to  come  in,  but 
brought  out  a  chair  and  set  it  in  front  of  her 
cabin  door  that  she  might  offer  him  some 
hospitality.  It  was  in  truth  the  only  chair 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  29 

which  possessed  four  legs  in  the  whole  of  her 
possessions.  She  spoke  to  him  from  the  be- 
ginning, as  Friday  saw  with  dissatisfaction,  as 
if  he  had  been  a  little  baby.  Without  the 
slightest  apology  she  understood  that  he  was 
a  "tender-foot,"  and  that  he  was  entirely  away 
from  his  belongings.  Any  fancy  which  he 
had  had  that  the  manners  of  rancho  life  had 
fitted  him  for  the  wilderness  of  New  York 
was  now  entirely  removed.  He  was  treated 
as  an  exotic,  who  needed  the  care  of  an  exotic, 
and  really,  he  said  aftenvards,  in  writing  to 
his  mother,  that,  if  he  had  been  a  night- 
blooming  Cereus,  he  could  not  have  been 
thought  to  be  more  unfit  for  his  surround- 
ings. 

Perhaps,  to  be  frank,  this  was  quite  as  well. 
For  the  boy  had  been  worked  very  hard  in 
his  lonely  adventure,  and  it  was  quite  as  well 
that  he  had  somebody  to  care  for  him  now, 
with  a  better  care  than  his  own  woodcraft  had 
suggested. 

In  a  few  minutes,  his  weird  hostess  had 


30  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

brought  him  a  mug  of  molasses  and  water. 
The  boy  had  never  seen  such  a  mixture  be- 
fore ;  but  the  water  had  been  drawn  cool  from 
the  well,  she  had  shaken  a  little  ginger  upon 
the  top  of  it,  with  it  she  brought  a  doughnut 
hot  from  the  spider,  and  he  found  he  was  more 
hungry  than  he  knew.  Despite  her  weird  face 
and  the  Voodoo  look  which  he  had  imagined 
at  the  beginning,  he  partook  of  her  bounty. 
And  then,  while  she  was  off  on  some  inspec- 
tion of  her  chickens  or  ducks,  before  he  knew 
it,  the  boy  fell  asleep  on  the  ground.  Witch 
or  no  witch,  she  had  sympathy  enough,  when 
she  came  back  to  the  cabin,  to  throw  over  him 
a  gray  blanket  which  had  survived  the  war, 
and  to  let  him  finish  his  nap. 

When  he  woke,  it  took  him  a  minute  or 
two  to  get  himself  together,  and  to  find  out 
where  he  was.  Then  he  entered  into  an  ex- 
planation with  his  hostess,  and  she  brought 
,to  the  talk  all  the  geographical  knowledge 
which  a  life^of  thirty  years  in  this  region  had 
given  her.  She  soon  explained  to  him  that 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  31 

he  had  come  over  this  "  shed  line,"  as  she  al- 
ways chose  to  call  it,  which  divided  her  val- 
ley from  his  valley.  And  when  the  boy 
urged  quite  eagerly  that  he  must  go  home 
that  night,  she  explained  to  him  that  this 
was  wholly  out  of  the  question.  She  would 
not  let  him  go  if  he  wanted  to,  and  if  he 
tried  to,  he  would  never  find  his  friends. 
No,  he  must  spend  the  night  in  her  cabin. 
"  An'  ye'll  see  we'll  make  ye  comf 'ble  here, 
'ft  aint  wot  ye're  use  ter.  I  know  wot  boys 
like  an'  wot  city  folks  like  zwell  zany  of  'em." 

Friday  hated  to  give  up  reporting  at  camp 
that  night,  but  he  accepted  the  inevitable, 
and  staid  with  her. 

Of  the  two  hours  which  followed,  it  would 
be  hard  to  give  an  account.  The  "  old  witch" 
was  eager  to  justify  her  promises  with  regard 
to  herself  and  her  hospitality.  The  only  sug- 
gestion of  civilization  was  the  cooking-stove. 
She  could  live  in  the  wilderness  and  carry  on 
her  primitive  farming,  very  much,  to  tell  the 
truth,  as  her  ancestors  would  have  done  it  by 


32  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

the  River  Congo.  But  no  woman  who  ever 
lived  within  ten  miles  of  a  cooking-stove  is 
willing  to  be  without  one ;  and  this  stove 
stood,  an  incongruous  element  in  the  sav- 
agery around  it,  looking  somewhat  as  a  statue 
of  Diana  might  look  which  had  been  dug  out 
in  Asia  Minor  in  the  midst  of  a  cattle-pen 
with  its  surroundings. 

Not  at  all  to  Friday's  dislike,  the  supper 
which  was  furnished  had  all  the  elements  of 
the  negro  success  in  cooking.  The  centre 
and  special  glory  of  it  was  in  the  hot  griddle- 
cakes,  which  descended  from  above,  as  she 
switched  them  over  his  head  from  the  pan. 
The  boy  had  the  best  sauce  in  the  appetite 
which  he  had  brought  with  him,  and  when 
he  praised  her  provision  as  cordially  as  he 
did,  he  had  not  to  exaggerate  in  a  word. 
Then  he  found  that  she  had  made  a  little  fire 
out  of  doors,  of  which  the  smoke  drew  near 
enough  to  them  to  drive  away  all  the  mos- 
quitoes, and  before  he  went  to  bed  he  sat 
there,  talking  with  her  as  if  he  had  known 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  33 

her  for  a  hundred  years.  He  found,  when  he 
thought  it  over,  that  he  had  told  her  every- 
thing about  his  South  American  home,  had 
talked  to  her,  as  if  she  were  his  mother, 
about  old  experiences  of  the  plains  and  of 
his  rancho  life,  and  he  wondered  that  she 
had  so  bewitched  him  that  to  an  ignorant, 
dirty  hag  like  her  he  should  have  made  more 
confidences  than  he  had  done  even  to  these 
boys  whom  he  had  known  so  well. 

But  the  truth  was  that  a  certain  motherly 
yearning  had  taken  possession  of  the  old 
woman,  and  the  gentleness  with  which  she 
approached  him  was  really  something  like 
that  which  his  own  mother  would  have  shown 
to  a  stray  boy  who  might  have  come  into  her 
elegant  home  in  Montevideo.  Friday  would 
never  have  confessed  to  it  himself,  but  he 
had  been  to  her  a  lost  lamb,  and  she  had 
pleased  herself  with  the  care  she  could  lavish 
upon  him.  When  bed-time  came,  he  found 
indeed  a  comfortable  bed  made  up  for  him, 
with  clean  sheets  and  clean  pillow.  He  did 
3 


34  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


not  know,  but  the  reader  may  as  well  know, 
that  these  had  been  discovered  in  the  bottom 
of  a  chest  which  had  not  yielded  up  such 
secrets  for  a  dozen  years. 

The  next  morning  she  wakened  him  early. 
He  was  on  his  feet  before  the  sun  rose.  She 
told  him  that  if  he  wanted  to  wash,  he  would 
have  to  go  down  to  the  spring ;  it  was  clear 
enough  that  she  had  no  facilities  for  the 
toilet,  but  the  boy  soon  made  himself  com- 
fortable, and  when  he  returned  found  all  the 
preparations  going  forward  for  a  breakfast 
even  more  elaborate  than  was  the  supper  of 
the  night  before.  So  soon  as  she  saw  that 
he  would  eat  no  more  she  said  : — 

"Now  den,  we'll  put  up  some  o'  dem 
doughnuts,  we'll  put  up  a  little  bit  o'  po'k, 
an'  some  hard  biled  eggs,  an'  we'll  go  down 
ter  the  brook,  an'  we'll  cross  by  Hasbrouck's, 
an'  I'll  show  ye  the  short  cut  over  by  the 
quarries,  an'  then  ye'll  know  what's  yer  way 
home." 

Friday  was  a  little  disgusted  that  he  could 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  35 

not  get  back  to  his  camp  without  a  patroness. 
But  he  had  had  experience  enough  of  follow- 
ing roads  without  direction  on  the  day  before, 
and  as  it  was  clear  that  she  would  not  let  him 
go  alone,  he  again  accepted  the  inevitable 
and  started  with  her.  She  humored  him  so 
far  as  to  let  him  roll  up  the  doughnuts  in  his 
blankets.  For  herself  she  made  up  another 
pack,  which  she  swung  over  her  shoulder  as 
if  she  had  been  a  man  upon  his  march,  and 
led  the  boy  off  with  her,  triumphant. 


36  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

OO  was  it  that  when  Guthrie,  on  the  even- 
ing of  that  day,  brought  his  party  on 
their  return  out  on  the  clearing  at  Sham- 
rock's, they  saw,  half  a  mile  away,  the  flag 
flying  on  their  own  staff,  and  a  promising 
cloud  of  smoke  blue  against  the  hemlocks. 

The  half-mile  was  soon  crossed,  though 
their  feet  were  sore  and  their  legs  tired. 
For  they  all  wanted  to  know  Friday's  story, 
and  they  were  all  relieved  to  know  that  he 
was  well  at  home.  What  was  the  amazement 
of  Guthrie,  not  to  say  his  terror,  to  be  re- 
ceived, not  by  Friday,  but  by  a  negro  prin- 
cess. 

She  was  a  princess,  who  for  the  moment 
had  no  crown  of  diamonds,  nor  wreath  of 
myrtle.  But  she  did  have  a  queer  red  ban- 
danna handkerchief  wound  round  her  head, 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  37 

rather  picturesquely,  and  at  the  moment  she 
was  brandishing  a  long  willow  stick,  forked 
at  the  end,  from  which  she  had  just  dropped 
a  slice  of  fried  pork. 

"  Seed  ye  was  comin ',"  she  said,  cheerfully, 
to  Guthrie,  "  and  we  knowed  ye'd  be  hungry, 
so  him  and  me's  all  ready."  And  at  this 
moment  "him"  appeared  from  behind  the 
hemlocks  with  the  trout,  three  or  four  dozen, 
which  he  had  been  catching  for  the  supper  of 
the  travellers.  General  glee  and  mutual  grat- 
ulation  followed — the  interwoven  tale  was 
told,  of  who  shouted  last  and  who  heard 
what,  as  the  boys  cast  off  their  packs,  pulled 
off  their  boots  and  found  the  stones  in  them 
— and  so  all  fell  to  glad  and  ready  work  on 
the  sumptuous  supper  which  Friday  and  the 
Princess  had  prepared  for  them.  This  story 
would  never  be  done  were  we  to  give  the  re- 
cipes for  the  hoe-cakes  and  griddle-cakes 
which  the  Princess  had  insisted  on  preparing, 
and  which,  to  Friday's  amazement,  proved 
possible  even  with  their  tools  for  cooking. 


38  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

And,  while  the  boys  had  fancied  all  the  last 
year  that  they  knew  how  to  fry  trout  and 
pork,  they  learned  now  that  they  were  only 
children,  and  that  they  must  sit  at  the  Prin- 
cess's feet  before  they  boasted  of  their  skill 
again. 

Guthrie  was  distressed  because  he  did  not 
know  into  which  of  the  palaces  at  his  com- 
mand he  should  stow  the  Princess  for  the 
night.  But  she  solved  all  his  questions  by 
withdrawing  as  soon  as  she  saw  that  "  hun- 
ger now  and  thirst  were  fully  satisfied." 

"  Woll,  boys,  here's  good-bye  to  all  of  you, 
'n  we'll  meet  again  to-morrow.  I'm  goin' 
down  the  stream  to  old  Coram's — hain't  seen 
'em  nor  heerd  on  'em  for  these  four  years." 
And  so  she  was  gone. 


"  I  move  she  be  chosen  into  the  club." 
This  was  Harrison's  first  speech  as  he  joined 
the  party  by  the  fire,  having  accompanied 
the  Princess  to  the  town-road.  "  She's  first- 
rate,  I  tell  you." 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  39 

"Has  she  ever  heard  of  the  mottoes?" 
said  Beechnut. 

"  I  don't  know,  and  I  don't  care.  There 
are  plenty  of  people  who  cannot  say  the  mot- 
toes who  can  do  the  things.  And  it's  clear 
enough  that  she  knows  how  to  Lend  a  Hand, 
which  is,  I  suppose,  the  test  of  the  whole. 
Mr.  Mitchell  says  it's  all  rot  talking  about 
the  three  first  mottoes  unless  you  are  square 
on  the  fourth." 

"  Did  he  say  that  ?     Where  did  he  say  it  ? " 

"  He  said  it  in  a  sermon,  the  last  Sunday 
before  I  left  Hartford.  That  is,  he  did  not 
say  those  words  of  course,  he  made  it  longer, 
• — they  all  do.  But  that  is  what  it  came  to, 
'in  conclusion,  my  brethren.'" 

"  Well,"  said  Guthrie,  more  doubtfully,  af- 
fected, unconsciously  indeed,  by  the  color  of 
the  candidate,  "  we  will  see  when  she  appears. 
We  will  examine  her.  For  the  present  I  am 
satisfied  with  a  club  of  eight,  and  I  propose 
that  we  turn  in."  Accordingly  the  club 
turned  in.  Harrison's  duty  was  to  rebuild 


4O  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

the  fire  at  midnight,  and  John's  to  do  the 
same  thing  between  three  and  four  in  the 
morning.  They  were  used  to  waking  at  or- 
der in  this  fashion,  and  the  embers  were  still 
glowing  when,  at  half-past  five,  the  Princess 
appeared,  looked  with  approval  on  the  sleep- 
ing crowd,  built  up  the  fire  to  please  herself, 
hung  her  kettle  of  water  upon  it.  When  the 
boys  awoke  she  laughed  at  them  all. 

"  S'pose  it  was  an  enemy  that  come  in  on 
ye  ;  s'pose  the  enemy  carried  off  all  ye  pork 
'n'  molasses  'n'  things,  ware  would  ye  all  be 
then  ? "  But,  all  the  same,  she  was  well 
pleased  that  she  had  stolen  a  march  on  them, 
and  had  succeeded  in  starting  a  much  better 
breakfast  than  the  boys  would  have  managed 
for  themselves. 

She  kept  herself  so  busy,  as  she  fed  them, 
that  it  was  not  till  they  had  finished  their 
breakfast  that  she  began  on  hers.  But  the 
boys  would  not  hear  of  her  washing  up  the 
plates.  They  said  they  could  do  that  as  well 
as  she  could,  and  perhaps  they  were  right 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  41 

there.  Then  it  was  that  Guthrie  skilfully 
began  the  examination  he  had  promised. 

"Auntie"  he  said,  "what  did  you  find 
down  at  Coram's  ?  I  cannot  make  much  of 
him.  He's  so  still,  and  don't  like  to  talk  to 
boys." 

"Still— is  he  still?"  And  the  Princess 
laughed.  "  Can  holler  loud  enough  when  he 
wants  to.  If  ye  see  him  at  'n  encouragement 
meetin'  ye  would  not  say  he  was  still.  But 
he's  all  tuckered  out,  poor  critter,  'n'  discour- 
aged like.  'N'  w'en  he  sees  you  young  gem- 
plem,  et  sort  o'  makes  him  'member  like  w'en 
he  had  two  coats,  ye  know,  'n  was  as  good  as 
any  one  all  through  the  valley  here.  That's 
w'y  he's  still." 

Two  or  three  of  the  boys  inquired  sympa- 
theticall^  what  had  happened  to  Coram,  and 
the  Princess  expressed  her  surprise  that  they 
did  not  know. 

"That  shows  how  still  he  is,"  she  said, 
half  meditatively,  "  for  he's  never  told  no- 
body what  happened  to  him." 


42  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

It  proved  that,  in  the  great  freshet  of 
which  the  boys  well  knew  the  story,  two  or 
three  years  before,  when  the  stream  rose  be- 
yond all  previous  knowledge,  the  wrecks  of 
the  county  bridge,  six  or  eight  miles  above 
them,  had  been  swept  down  on  the  flood, 
quite  unbroken,  and  had  struck  the  bridge 
which  crossed  the  river  at  Coram's,  so  as  to 
destroy  it.  Instantly,  as  the  boys  knew,  the 
county  bridge  itself,  on  a  meadow  below,  had 
come  to  grief  or  broken  into  its  component 
parts,  and  poor  Coram's  bridge  had  perhaps 
gone  farther  down.  At  all  events,  it  was 
never  put  together,  so  that  it  had  disappeared. 
The  county  had  rebuilt  their  bridge  with  iron, 
and  the  general  trade  of  the  world  went  on 
as  if  there  had  been  no  freshet.  But  poor 
Coram's  bridge  was  no  county  affair,  and  he 
found  himself,  therefore,  in  the  little  cabin 
in  which  he  lived  prosperously  enough, 
without  any  means  of  crossing  the  river. 
This  was  of  little  consequence  to  him  per- 
sonally, because  he  did  not  cross  it  twenty 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  43 

times  in  a  year.  But  as  a  member  of  soci- 
ety he  felt  the  change.  Hundreds  of  people 
used  to  go  down  to  Schuyler  for  their  mar- 
keting, and  perhaps  for  their  mails,  across 
his  bridge  as  the  short  cut.  And  now  all 
these  people  kept  on  the  highway  a  mile 
above  him,  and  no  one  of  them  ever  saw  his 
house  pr  darkened  his  door.  Coram  was  a 
bit  of  a  blacksmith  in  his  way,  had  a  wretched 
forge  by  the  house,  and,  while  he  pretended 
to  live  upon  his  farm,  which  was  no  farm, 
he  really  eked  out  his  living  by  setting  a  shoe, 
or  even  re-arranging  a  tire,  as  these  travellers 
passed.  More  than  the  poor  sixpences  and 
shillings  which  came  to  him  from  his  busi- 
ness was  the  cheerful  talk  with  wayfarers  as 
they  came  and  went ;  and  if  he  had  been 
philosopher  enough  to  analyze  his  morose- 
ness,  it  would  have  been  because  he  was  so 
much  alone  that  he  was  so  silent.  All  this 
story  the  Princess  told,  as  she  ate  the  griddle- 
cakes  and  the  trout  which  she  had  herself 
prepared  for  her  owr.  breakfast. 


44  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

"  You  think,  then,"  said  Guthrie,  "  that 
old  Corara  is  what  we  call  blue  ?  You  think 
that  he  is  out  of  spirits  because  he  sees  no- 
body?" 

"Yes,  honey,  yes,"  said  the  old  woman, 
"  That's  exackly  it.  None  on  us  can  live  so. 
His  old  woman, — well,  she  died  not  long  after 
the  war.  His  boys — he's  got  three  boys — is 
all  gone  off  to  strange  countries,  and  I  guess 
they's  forgot,  or  maybe  they're  dead.  An' 
old  Coram  sets  there,  eat'n'  out  his  own  heart, 
he  does,  unless  somebody  comes  along  'n' 
holds  a  meetin'  ;  and  then  old  Coram  sings 
and  shouts  with  the  rest  on  'em.  But  'tisn't 
good  to  live  all  alone.  Et's  no  good  lookin' 
back  to  old  times,  whether  they  wus  better 
or  wus  wuss,  onless  ye's  lookin'  forward  to 
what  the  good  God  has  ready  to-morrow. 
There's  no  sayin'  what  to-morrow'll  bring, 
boys.  Sure  it'll  bring  sunrise,  sure  it'll 
bring  light ;  and  there's  no  sayin'  what  more 
it'll  bring,  ef  ye'll  trust  it.  Now,  old  Coram, 
he  looks  back  ;  he's  all  the  time  sayin'  what 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  45 

good  times  he  had  when  his  wife  was  here, 
an'  his  boys  was  little,  an'  the  bridge  was  up  ; 
and  he's  all  the  time,  same's  I  said  to  ye,  eat'n 
his  own  heart,  'n'  sayin'  he's  a  sinner  o'  sin- 
ners. Old  Coram  isn't  a  sinner  o'  sinners  ; 
he's  no  more  a  sinner  than  I  be.  But  any- 
body would  think  he  was  a  sinner  o'  sinners 
that  lived  all  alone." 

Friday  caught  Guthrie's  eye,  and  intimated 
to  him  in  a  glance  that  he  thought  one  or 
two  of  his  questions  were  answered.  He 
pressed  the  cross-examination  a  little  farther, 
however : 

"  Auntie,"  said  he,  "  I  don't  see  that.  You 
are  not  down-hearted,  but  you  are  more  alone 
than  Coram.  I  came  to  your  house,  but  no- 
body ever  passes  by,  and  I  am  the  only  per- 
son that  has  been  near  you  this  year." 

"  Honey  dear,  honey  dear,"  said  the  old 
woman,  "  You's  quite  wrong  there.  You 
mustn't  say  such  things  as  that  to  me.  No, 
honey,  when  you  come  to  live  ez  I  live  ye'll 
know  there's  one  friend  that's  near  ye  all  the 


46  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

time.  Ye  seek  the  good  God,  'n'  ye  find  the 
good  God  ;  ye  seek  your  Saviour,  'n'  ye  find 
your  Saviour.  Ef  ye  ain't  lookin'  for  worms 
ye'll  see  angels,  boys, — an'  that's  one  thing 
Coram  ought  to  do.  He  oughter  be  thinkin' 
o'  the  Heaven  of  Heavens  and  the  God  of 
Heaven  some  time  when  there  isn't  an  en- 
couragement meetin'.  An'  then  he  would 
know  what  you  mean  an'  I  mean  when  we 
tell  him  that  he  doesn't  live  for  himself. 
Elder  Shoemaker  told  him  that  at  the  last 
encouragement  meetin',  an'  I  thought  et 
would  do  him  some  good.  But  it  hain't  done 
him  no  good  at  all." 

Friday  assumed  from  the  beginning  the 
airs  of  a  proprietor  who  had  discovered  the 
Princess,  and  introduced  her  into  the  society. 
After  this  declaration  of  her  faith  and  prin- 
ciples he  initiated  her,  without  taking  any 
vote  of  the  rest. 

"Auntie,"  he  said,  "you  belong  with  us. 
This  is  a  club — till  now  of  eight  members. 
But  you  will  be  nine." 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  47 

"  Club,  honey  ? — and  wot  you  club  for  ? " 

"We  club  to  have  a  good  time,  first,  and 
in  general  to  Lend  a  Hand  where  there's  a 
chance.  But  we  could  not  Lend  a  Hand  if 
we  did  not  look  up,  and  look  forward,  and,  as 
you  say,  think  of  somebody  bigger  than  we 
are,  and  better." 

The  others  were  amazed  to  hear  Friday 
make  so  long  a  speech.  "  Who  would  have 
thought  that  he  was  an  orator,  as  Brutus  is  ? " 
said  Nelson  afterwards.  But  they  signified 
their  assent  by  saying  "  That's  so "  and 
"Yes  "  and  by  nods,  or,  at  least,  winks,  and 
the  Princess  saw  that  they  were  all  quite  in 
earnest. 

"  You'ze  good  fellows  all,"  said  she ;  "  ye 
know  how  glad  I  be  to  know  you  all,  and  how 
sorry  I  be  that  you  uns  is  not  here  all  the 
time.  Ef  you  really  want  to  lend  a  hand  w'y 
don't  we  all  go  down  to  poor  old  Coram's 
and  cheer  him  up  a  little  ? " 

"  Because  he  don't  want  to  see  us,"  said 
Will  Wickham,  decidedly.  And  Wickham 


48  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

explained  how  one  day  when  he  went  into 
Coram's  for  a  match,  Coram  was  as  cross  as 
a  bear. 

"That's  just  wot  I  tell  ye,  honey.  He 
bees  as  cross  as  a  bear.  He  was  w'en  I 
come  down  there  last  night — 'n'  we  old  fren's, 
at  that.  He  was  as  cross  as  two  bears  w'en 
I  come  up  this  morning,  'cos  I  come  away, 
jest  as  he  was  cross  w'en  I  come  in,  'cos  I 
had  come.  But  wot  I  say,  boys  all,  es  this  : 
Ef  we  is  a  club — w'ich  is,  I  b'lieve,  a  little 
church  without  any  meetin'-house — ef  we  is, 
w'y,  we  has  to  convert  the  heathen.  'N'  if 
people  is  crooked,  we  is  to  make  'em  turn 
round  and  be  straight.  Ef  he  was  good- 
natered  and  hed  all  right,  we  could  not  help 
him,  and  no  use  in  our  coming." 

"  Right  you  are,  Princess,  every  time," 
said  Colorado  Hanger,  "  and  I'll  go  with  you. 
There's  two.  If  the  old  man's  lonely,  he 
shan't  be  lonely  for  the  next  hour.  Only  I 
will  not  promise  to  stay  till  after  ten  o'clock, 
for  then  I  am  going  to  look  at  my  snares." 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  49 

"  Right  she  is,  I  believe,"  said  Will  Wick- 
ham  himself.  "  And  if  you  say  so,  Colorado, 
I  will  go — though  what  old  Coram  wants  of 
a  lot  of  tender-foot  boys,  I  do  not  know." 

"  Who's  a  tender-foot  ? "  said  the  other, 
who  had  picked  up  the  name  of  Hanger,  no 
one  knew  how,  and  whose  exact  pride  was 
that  he  was  not  a  tender-foot.  He  found 
his  hatchet,  Wickham  took  his  fishing  tackle, 
and,  one  by  one,  the  others  all  joined  the 
party. 

Nor  did  they  return,  as  it  proved,  even  to 
look  at  the  snares,  all  day.  And  for  many 
days  after,  so  soon  as  breakfast  was  over,  the 
whole  force  went  down  to  Coram's  and  spent 
the  day.  The  Princess  had  to  go  home,  to 
see  to  her  live  stock  and  the  general  interests 
of  her  farm.  But  she  made  nothing  of  the 
"divide,"  or  the  miles  which  parted  her  from 
Coram's,  and  hardly  a  day  passed  when  she 
did  not  appear,  with  a  pie  or  two,  or  a  bag  of 
doughnuts,  or  a  basket  of  popped  corn,  or 
4 


FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


something  else  which  she  thought  would  cheer 
the  working-party. 

For  it  was  a  working-party,  indeed.  The 
boys  had  been  careful  about  forcing  them- 
selves on  Coram's  attention,  and  had  gone  first 
to  see  the  ruins  of  the  bridge.  They  had 
never  fairly  understood,  before,  how  Coram's 
bitterness  or  general  sourness  came  from  the 
fatal  freshet  which  had  swept  his  bridge  away. 
They  saw  but  few  ruins,  it  must  be  confessed 
at  first,  for  there  were  but  few  to  see.  All 
that  could  be  seen  were  the  two  piers  —  if  they 
deserve  the  name  —  which  had  supported  the 
roadway  on  the  north  and  south  sides  of  the 
stream.  The  stream  itself  had  risen  so  that 
it  was  flowing  above  the  roadway  when  the 
crisis  came.  "  An'  then,"  said  Coram,  when 
he  came  down  to  give  his  account  of  the  ca- 
lamity, "  I  b'lieve  she  would  have  stood,  —  'cos 
you  see  here  was  a  good  water-way  over  the 
road  this  side  un  that  side,  —  only  the  busted 
old  four-post  from  Campbell's  came  sailin' 
down  on  the  flood,  'n'  struck  her  square,  'n' 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  5 1 

then  it  was  all  kingdom  come  with  her.  No 
more  bridge,  'n'  no  more  road,  nor  ever  will 
be." 

The  boys  respected  his  grief,  but  they  filed 
off,  one  by  one,  down  through  the  raspberry 
bushes  and  willow-herb  in  the  meadow  to  look 
at  the  wrecks  of  the  "  busted  old  four-post," 
as  he  had  irreverently  named  the  battering- 
ram  which  had  wrought  such  ruin.  The  leader 
now  was  Henry  Eveleth,  who  was  a  born  en- 
gineer, and  was  now  in  his  second  year  in  the 
Polytechnic  at  Troy.  He  was  talking  eagerly 
with  Guthrie,  and,  in  a  minute  more,  was 
joined  by  the  group.  He  made  short  surveys 
of  the  old  bed-posts,  and  then  pushed  through 
the  rank  meadow  growth  to  the  stream  itself. 
Then  he  called  all  the  boys  together  and 
said : — 

"  Fellows,  I  tell  you  what  it  is.  We  can 
build  up  the  old  man's  bridge  again  if  we  want 
to,  and  I  move  we  do.  It  would  be  a  mighty 
good  job.  There  is  plank  enough  here  on  the 
floor  of  his  old  four-post  to  make  the  roadway. 


52  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

This  log  here  and  that  one  which  is  lodged  in 
the  rocks  yonder  are  long  enough  to  span  the 
stream.  We  ought  to  haul  some  short  logs — 
two,  four,  or,  maybe,  eight — to  make  the 
bridge  sixteen  inches  higher  than  it  was,  so 
as  not  to  have  it  swept  off  again.  Don't  you 
suppose  we  could  get  a  fall  and  tackle  some- 
where ?  L  we  had  them  we  could  haul  our 
long  roadway  timbers  into  place,  and  after 
that  it  would  be  all  child's  play.  Old  '  four- 
post'  here  would  furnish  all  the  material." 

Eveleth  had  never  made  so  long  a  speech 
before,  within  the  memory  of  man.  When 
some  one  told  him  so,  he  said,  no,  he  had 
never  had  so  much  to  say.  The  boys  were 
delighted,  and  signified  the  most  cordial  as- 
sent. Friday  and  Guthrie  went  up  to  their 
camp  to  bring  everything  they  had  in  the  way 
of  axe,  hatchet,  saw,  and  hammer.  Eveleth 
himself,  however,  knew  the  insufficiency  of 
these,  and,  leaving  full  instructions  for  the 
others  what  they  were  to  do  in  his  absence  in 
knocking  off  planks  from  the  floor  of  "old 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  S3 

four-post,"  he  walked  down  with  Will  and 
Nelson  to  the  corners  and  hired  a  wagon  to 
take  him  across  to  Pratt's.  By  the  time  the 
others  had  worked  themselves  hungry,  had 
some  potatoes  in  the  ashes,  some  pork  cut  to 
fry,  and  some  trout  ready  to  fill  out  the  feast, 
the  three  were  back  in  triumph.  They  had 
borrowed  a  spare  set  of  blocks  at  the  mill ; 
they  had  bought  a  cross-cut  saw,  with  the 
promise  that  the  man  would  take  it  back  again 
at  three-quarters  what  they  gave  if  it  were  not 
sprung,  and  sundry  other  tools  which  Eveleth 
knew  they  had  need  of.  Old  Coram  produced 
his  appliances,  such  as  they  were,  an  intimat- 
ed that  the  forge  could  be  put  in  order  again, 
after  its  two  years'  rest.  Eveleth  humored 
him  so  far  as  to  go  and  look  at  the  forge,  and 
gave  Guthrie  and  Friday  his  directions  as  to 
how  it  should  be  set  in  order. 

His  working-party  had  shown  discretion, 
and  had  obeyed  orders.  The  old  joke  says 
that  two  boys  can  do  the  work  of  one  man, 
three  boys  half  the  work  of  a  man,  and  four 


54  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

boys  no  work  at  all.  But  this  old  saw  was 
belied  in  this  case,  for  the  working-party  had 
ready  for  him  three  timbers,  not  too  heavy 
for  them  to  handle,  and  before  night  Eveleth 
had  rigged  these  as  a  derrick  on  the  south 
side  of  the  stream.  They  stood  like  three 
gigantic  supports  to  a  gigantic  gipsy-kettle, 
had  there  been  one. 

The  stream  itself,  as  the  boys  measured  it, 
was  eighteen  feet  wide  between  one  abut- 
ment and  another.  It  was,  at  this  time,  run- 
ning quite  full,  and,  although  there  were  ways 
by  which  an  active  boy  could  go  to  the  other 
side,  by  a  circuit  of  a  quarter  of  a  mile,  Eve- 
leth's  first  care  was  to  borrow  planks  enough 
from  old  "four-post"  to  make  a  footway,  sup- 
ported by  trestles,  so  that  his  "work-boys" 
might  cross  readily  from  one  side  to  the  other. 

It  was  a  pretty  sight,  one  which  an  angel 
might  have  smiled  to  see,  and  which  an  arch- 
angel also  might  have  loitered  to  enjoy, — the 
sight  of  old  Coram,  when  he  began  to  under- 
stand that  something  would  be  done  about  it. 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  55 

When  the  bridge  had  been  swept  away,  and 
he  ruined  in  the  sweeping,  poor  Coram  had 
caught  every  straggler  who  came  there  in  ig- 
norance, and  turned  back  again,  to  explain 
that  "something  must  be  done  about  it." 
But  alas !  the  stragglers  were  only  eager  to 
get  back  to  the  county  road,  and  hardly 
listened  while  they  were  turning  their  horses' 
heads.  Then  came  one  and  another  road- 
master  and  supervisor,  always  in  a  hurry,  and 
poor  Coram,  not  eloquent  by  nature,  found 
that  they  saw,  in  a  glance,  that  the  travel  on 
his  by-way  did  not  justify  much  expense. 
"  It  would  be  a  poor  job  anyway,"  unless 
you  changed  the  whole  road,  and  made  it 
cross  somewhere  where  it  did  not  cross. 
And  so  poor  Coram  found,  as  many  a  man 
and  boy  finds,  alas !  that  a  possible  better 
prevents  a  present  good.  He  got  neither 
good  nor  better.  He  had  gradually  come  to 
believe  that  nothing  would  be  done  about  it. 
And  now  there  had  descended  upon  him  a 
gang  of  boys,  whom  only  last  week  he 


$6  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

thought  as  useless  as  any  flock  of  butterflies  ; 
like  butterflies  they  were  swarming  here  and 
there  over  scenes  of  ruin  or  the  world's  clear 
places,  quite  indifferent,  but  determined  that 
something  should  be  done  about  it.  It 
proved,  indeed,  that  so  soon  as  the  latent 
hope  started  in  Coram's  life  he  was  a  ninth 
workman  of  great  efficiency  in  the  crowd. 
He  obeyed,  too.  For  Eveletji  was  a  born 
leader,  and  he  never  had  to  speak  twice  to 
Coram.  And  when  it  came  to  borrowing 
crow-bars,  and  afterwards  to  remembering 
who  had  augurs,  and  where  there  was  a 
wrench  within  five  miles,  Coram's  knowl- 
edge of  the  neighborhood  came  into  good 
activity. 

So,  as  I  said,  angels  would  have  smiled 
and  archangels  approved  what  they  saw  on 
old  Coram's  face. 

The  stream  itself,  at  this  moment,  was  full 
enough  to  make  a  water-way  by  which  Henry 
Eveleth  transported  his  heavier  timbers 
from  below,  where  they  had  been  left  on  Hie 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  57 

meadow.  He  was  wholly  indifferent  to  the 
looks  of  his  bridge,  so  it  was  done.  It  was 
nothing  to  him,  he  said,  if  a  log  were  too 
long.  So  he  could  only  carry  it  from  place 
to  place,  and  lift  it,  the  extra  length  might 
be  left  for  woodchucks  to  sit  upon.  First  of 
all,  as  has  been  said,  he  raised  the  two  abut- 
ments a  foot  and  a  half  higher  then  they 
were.  He  knew,  and  the  boys  knew,  that 
this  made  necessary  the  lifting  up  of  the 
roadways  to  that  level,  but  he  postponed  this 
work  till  his  bridge  proper  was  done.  The 
lifting  on  the  logs,  which  he  laid  in  cob-work 
for  these  abutments,  made  the  first  test  of 
his  derrick  and  of  his  blocks  and  rope.  They 
proved  quite  strong  enough  for  the  test,  and 
his  boys  learned  a  lesson  in  the  transfer  of 
power  which  served  them  well  afterward,  in 
examinations  in  physics  in  school.  So  soon 
as  these  two  abutments  were  done,  he  was 
ready  for  his  heavier  work.  Coram  had 
promised  him  the  assistance  of  this  and  that 
loafer,  charcoal-man,  and  other  "vagrom" 


58  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

from  ten  miles  around,  as  if  it  had  been  the 
raising  of  a  barn  which  was  necessary.  But 
Eveleth  knew  the  use  of  trained  power,  even 
if  he  had  not  much  of  it.  He  never  refused 
these  accessories,  he  never  said  anything 
slight  regarding  them ;  but  he  relied  on  his 
legion  of  eight,  with  the  moral  force  which 
the  Princess  added,  and  the  knowledge  of 
the  neighborhood  which  he  derived  from 
Coram.  And  when,  after  four  days  of  hard 
work  upon  the  buttresses,  he  had  them  as 
solid  as  he  needed,  he  brought  all  his  eight 
to  work  upon  the  long  log  which  had  been 
predestined  to  span  the  stream  first.  Lift- 
ing with  crow-bars,  and  hauling  with  an  old 
horse  which  had  been  hired  at  Pratt's  for  the 
occasion,  he  dragged  this  heaviest  of  his 
timbers  into  the  stream.  There  was  another 
sawed  timber  in  the  old  "  four-post "  which, 
every  one  had  seen,  would  answer  for  one  of 
the  crossing  rafters.  As  they  had  the  horse 
there,  he  was  made  to  assist  in  the  hauling 
of  this  over  the  meadow,  and,  before  dinner- 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  59 

time,  both  of  these  essentials  were  floating 
in  the  cove  below  the  bridge. 

"It  is  all  just  like  Jackal's  River,"  said 
Friday.  "Do  not  you  remember, — in  the 
Swiss  Family  Robinson  ?  And  I  move  that 
this  river  be  called  the  Jackal's  River  to  the 
end  of  time."  The  boys  assented  to  this 
proposal,  as  they  sat  at  their  lunch ;  and,  by 
Guthrie's  addition  to  it,  the  bridge  was 
called  The  Mother's  Bridge.  And  if  you 
will  look  at  the  county  map  of  that  region, 
you  will  find  it  is  named  the  Mother's  Bridge 
to  this  day. 

Eveleth  announced  a  holiday  for  the  after- 
noon. He  complimented  his  working-force, 
said  they  had  all  done  a  great  deal  more  than 
he  had  thought  they  would,  and  added  that 
anybody  might  go  where  he  wanted  to, — 
snare  any  rabbits  he  chose,  climb  any  moun- 
tains, or  swim  in  any  ponds ;  he  would  not 
have  a  stroke  of  work  done  until  the  next 
morning.  "But  to-morrow"  he  said,  "rain 
or  shine,  we  will  have  the  bridge  put  to- 


6O  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

gather.     There  is  nothing  that  need  hinder 
now." 

And  accordingly,  on  the  next  day,  the 
Princess  came  down,  having  brought  with 
her  a  sort  of  vassal,  who  was  either  a  Mingo, 
a  mulatto,  or  a  Mohawk,  or  a  mixture  of  all 
such  races  ;  and  together  they  had  lugged  an 
enormous  basket,  which  contained  every 
variety  of  entertainment  which  savage  and 
half-savage  wits  could  provide  for  feasting, 
as  if  the  building  of  a  bridge  were  a  high 
festival.  By  unknown  couriers  it  had  been 
reported  that  the  bridge  was  to  be  raised, 
and,  though  nobody  had  been  invited,  vari- 
ous loafers  appeared.  Even  the  old  hermit 
condescended  to  come  down,  who  had  not 
been  known  to  speak  to  men  since  the  tax- 
gatherer  last  passed  that  way.  A  deputy- 
sheriff  stopped  in  his  career  to  witness  the 
proceedings  and  to  wonder.  But,  as  Eveleth 
had  done  all  along,  while  he  accepted  volun- 
teers, he  did  not  press  them  into  the  service. 
The  horse  was  not  sent  for ;  the  boys  them- 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  6 1 

selves  towed  the  logs  up  the  channel  to  the 
space  between  the  abutments,  a  good  hold 
was  got  on  the  end  of  Old  Faithful,  as  they 
called  the  unhewn  log,  and,  amid  the  cheers 
of  all  present,  it  was  lifted  into  its  place. 
Then  that  elegant  creature  of  society  which 
had  been  sawed  out  for  old  four-post,  rose, 
willingly  or  unwillingly,  to  the  corresponding 
place  at  the  other  end  of  the  south  abut- 
ment. Now  Eveleth  had  to  transfer  his  der- 
rick from  that  side  of  the  stream  to  the  other, 
where  he  had  not  needed  to  use  it  before. 
But,  with  as  much  help  as  he  had  now,  this 
transfer  only  took  him  till  dinner-time,  and, 
after  they  had  all  lunched  on  the  Princess's 
abundant  provisions,  the  other  end  of  each 
timber  was  safely  lifted  into  place.  The  as- 
sembly cheered  with  enthusiasm  when  he 
pronounced  that  both  timbers  were  solidly 
laid  ;  and  after  this,  the  planking  of  the 
bridge,  beginning  at  both  ends,  went  on 
almost  spontaneously.  He  was  not  satis- 
fied with  the  rough  planking  of  a  common 


62  .  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

country-way ;  he  provided  spikes  enough  and 
heavy  hammers,  and  he  knew  his  force  well 
enough  now  to  know  to  whom  he  might  en- 
trust them.  With  four  boys  at  work  on  the 
hammers,  and  four  in  carrying  planks  and 
laying  them,  the  eighteen  feet  of  bridge  were 
soon  laid,  and  then  Eveleth,  turning  to  Guth- 
rie,  said :  — 

"Mr.  President,  I  deliver 'the  bridge  into 
your  hands.  It  is  for  you  to  make  a  speech 
on  the  occasion." 

Guthrie  said,  "  Give  attention  to  a  speech 
from  the  president."  He  mounted  skilfully 
to  the  top  of  the  derrick,  waved  his  hat,  and 
cried, 

"  The  bridge  is  done ! " 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  63 


CHAPTER  V. 

'T^HE  achievement  of  the  bridge  closed 
the  work  of  the  club,  and  its  play,  for 
that  summer.  September  came,  and  with 
it  came  cold  nights.  The  boys  would  have 
borne  the  cold  nights,  cutting  and  piling  a  few 
more  logs  for  their  fires ;  but  they  were  re- 
minded by  their  letters  that  the  different 
schools  and  colleges  were  ready  for  them, 
and  that  they  must  be  gone. 

Before  they  parted  they  had  a  high  festi- 
val, in  which  the  Princess  was  initiated  as  the 
"  Mah-mah  "  of  the  club.  She  could  repeat 
the  short  ritual  as  well  as  any  of  them,  and 
in  her  modified  English  told  perfect  stories 
to  illustrate  looking  up,  looking  out,  looking 
forward,  and  lending  a  hand.  The  boys 
packed  up  a  great  box  of  cans  which  had  not 
been  opened,  ham  which  had  not  been  cut, 


64  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

hooks  which  had  not  been  baited,  and  made 
Coram,  who  was  a  new  man  since  he  saw  the 
bridge  completed,  carry  it  over  the  divide  to 
her  house.  Nelson  insisted  on  presenting  to 
her  his  double-barrel,  an  old-fashioned  gun 
which  had  descended  to  him  from  other  days. 
This  meant  a  great  joke  between  Mah-mah 
and  her  boys.  For  there  was  a  certain  hawk 
who  stole  her  pigeons  and  chickens.  She  no 
more  dared  fire  a  gun  than  she  dared  kiss  a 
copperhead.  Once  and  again  Nelson  or  Fri- 
day or  Guthrie  had  gone  over  to  her  "  ranch  " 
to  shoot  the  hawk  for  her.  But  when  there 
was  a  gun  within  a  mile,  she  said,  the  hawk 
disappeared.  Whether  this  were  an  individ- 
ual hawk,  as  old  Mah-mah  said,  or  whether 
those  vultures  collected  together  wherever 
there  were  chickens  or  pigeons  unaccompa- 
nied by  men,  is  more  doubtful. 

So  they  all  parted,  late  in  the  evening. 
And  thus  was  it  that  Four  and  Five  made 
nine. 

One  boy  went  one  way  and  one  another, — 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  65 

north,  south,  east,  and  west  ;  some  to  file, 
and  ply  the  lathe  in  technical  schools,  some 
to  study  at  desks  and  ply  the  file,  as  Horace 
bids  us,  in  schools  of  Latin ;  but  all  were 
pledged  not  to  forget  the  four  mottoes,  and 
to  initiate  one  each  into  the  club  before  the 
next  May.  The  story  will  grow  like  a  round 
cobweb  on  nine  different  lines,  if  I  try  to  tell 
the  method  or  the  success  of  all  the  nine. 
So  I  will  not  try  that.  But  I  will  ask  you  to 
hear  of  Friday's  tea-party  at  Bromwich,  as 
he  crossed  the  country  to  the  Van  Ness  Poly- 
technic, where  he  was  due  on  the  29th  of 
September. 

It  was  a  nice  house  at  Bromwich,  with 
plenty  of  cousins,  and  an  abundant  and  over- 
flowing hospitality.  Friday  had  never  seen 
one  of  them  before,  but  with  Jane  and  Susy, 
and  with  his  aunt  and  his  uncle,  and  with 
Tom,  Dick,  and  Harry,  and  even  with  little 
Fred,  he  was  on  the  best  of  terms  before  an 
hour  was  over.  And  they  all  liked  him. 

"  Mamma"  said  Jane  to  her  mother,  as 
5 


66  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

they  met  after  dinner  the  first  day,  "  the  boy 
does  not  think  of  himself  more  highly  than 
he  ought  to  think.  In  fact,  he  does  not 
think  of  himself  at  all.  So  he  is  not  a  shy 
cub,  imagining  that  everybody  is  looking  at 
him  ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  he  is  not  a  con- 
ceited fool,  thinking  that  everybody  is  ad- 
miring him." 

This  is  the  story  of  the  member  whom 
Friday  enlisted  for  the  Four  and  Five  Club, 
and  he  bound  him  to  it  with  hooks  of  steel. 

It  happened  that  the  day  Friday  arrived 
the  Pennimans  were  to  have  a  high  tea.  It 
was  to  be  very  high, — some  of  the  academy 
people  were  to  be  there,  and  Dr.  Milnes,  and 
the  Southern  ladies  from  Macon, — as  much 
as  twenty  people  in  all.  The  dining-room 
was  large,  and  there  were  five  oval  tables  big 
enough  for  all.  The  principal  guests  had 
their  seats  assigned  to  them,  but  after  they 
were  seated,  the  younger  people  found  their 
seats  as  they  might,  and  so  Friday  found 
himself  with  his  little  cousin  Fred  on  one 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  6/ 

side  and  Mr.  Aven  Geddes  on  the  other. 
Mr.  Geddes  looked  very  pale,  very  sad,  and 
was  very  silent.  Fred  was  very  hungry,  and 
occupied  himself  with  dipped  toast  and  mar- 
malade. 

"  I  was  not  going  to  play  deaf-and-dumb," 
said  Friday  afterward  to  Jane,  "and  so  I 
sailed  in.  I  asked  him  if  Bromwich  were  his 
home. 

" '  No,  my  poor  lad,  I  have  no  home, — no 
home.  I  am  here  to-day,  and  I  know  not 
where  to-morrow.  There  is  no  home  for  me.' 

"  Cousin  Jane,  I  thought  the  man  was 
crazy.  But  I  was  not  going  to  be  snubbed. 
I  said,  '  If  I  were  you,  then,  I  would  make  a 
home  here.  I  should  like  to  have  the  choice 
of  a  home,  and  if  Bromwich  is  as  pleasant  as 
it  seems,  I  would  try  it  till  I  found  a  better.' 

"  But,  Jane,  he  had  no  idea  of  being  cheer- 
ful. He  groaned  as  if  I  had  given  him  a 
square  hit  from  the  shoulder,  between  the 
eyes,  and  floored  him." 

"  '  Oh,  my  poor  boy,'  he  said,  '  you  know 


68  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

life  but  little.  I  have  too  much  to  think  of, 
in  the  memory  of  my  failure  in  the  past,  to 
consider  what  may  come  to  me  to-morrow  or 
the  next  day.'  And  then  in  a  minute  he 
said,  '  My  poor  child,  are  you  never  oppressed 
by  the  weight  of  your  omissions  and  delin- 
quencies ? ' " 

By  this  time  Jane  was  beside  herself, — it 
is  a  pity  to  have  to  say  it, — with  laughing. 
"  What  horrid  luck  threw  you  with  that  poor 
man  ? "  said  she.  "  He  was  to  have  been 
placed  beside  Mr.  Milnes,  in  the  hope  that 
Dr.  Milnes  would  cheer  him  up.  Why,  he 
is  the  nephew  of  the  famous  Dr.  Witherspoon, 
and  he  has  studied  himself  into  this  awful 
nervous  prostration,  which  is  almost  or  quite 
insanity.  Indeed,  he  is  to  go  to  Bethlehem, 
to  a  private  retreat,  to-morrow.  The  Ged- 
deses  asked  mamma  to  let  them  bring  him 
because  they  do  not  dare  leave  him  alone." 

"  He  is  not  going  to  Bethlehem  to-morrow 
morning,"  said  Friday,  laughing,  "  he  is 
going  to  ride  horseback  with  me.  Tom  has 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  69 

lent  me  Caspar  for  a  mount,  and  I  am  to 
take  Caspar  to  the  Geddeses  to  start  with 
him  at  six  in  the  morning." 

"  You  are  joking,"  said  she. 

"  Not  a  bit  of  it,"  said  Friday,  laughing 
again.  "  I  saw  there  was  a  screw  loose,  and 
I  was  glad  of  a  chance  to  tighten  it.  When 
he  asked  me  about  looking  back  on  my  delin- 
quencies, I  told  him  I  guessed  somebody 
else  was  willing  to  bear  my  delinquencies, 
and  that  he  had  better  join  the  Wadsworth 
Club.  He  did  not  know  what  that  was,  and 
I  told  him  he  must  '  look  up  and  not  down, 
look  forward  and  not  back,  look  out  and  not 
in,  and  lend  a  hand.' 

"  Jane,  he  looked  as  if  the  marble  woman 
under  the  mantel-piece  had  spoken  to  him, 
he  was  so  amazed." 

And  this  was  exactly  true.  If  Dr.  Milnes 
had  said  anything  encouraging  to  this  poor 
crazy  man,  he  would  have  taken  it  as  a  sort 
of  professional  counsel.  But  when  this  boy, 
with  stout  hands  and  loud  voice  and  a  raging 


7°  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

appetite,  spoke  the  great  words  of  faith  and 
hope  and  love,  which  are  the  three  central 
words  of  life,  poor  Mr.  Geddes  looked  around 
on  him,  as  much  surprised  indeed  as  if  the 
marble  woman  had  opened  her  mouth.  Be- 
fore he  knew  it,  Friday  was  telling  him  of 
the  club,  and  the  day  he  was  lost,  and  their 
old  negro  Mah-mah,  and  the  success  of  the 
bridge.  "  That  is  how  my  hand  has  such  a 
black  look,"  said  he.  Three  fingers  were  in 
cots  cut  from  a  glove.  "  I  mashed  those  fin- 
gers when  we  were  handling  a  stone  which 
was  too  big  for  us.  But  one  must  risk  some- 
thing." 

For  the  first  time  for  a  month,  as  Dr. 
Milnes  saw,  to  his  amazement,  from  the  other 
side  of  the  table,  poor  Mr.  Geddes  was  in 
animated  conversation.  Without  the  least 
design,  merely  from  the  contagion  of  eager, 
unselfish  life,  and  the  energy  of  life  which  is 
alive,  the  boy  had  dragged  him  outside  of  his 
shell.  He  was  telling  one  of  his  early  expe- 
riences in  India, — how  they  charged  a  mad 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  7l 

elephant,  when  of  a-  sudden  his  stirrup  broke 
and  he  found  himself  deep  in  the  mud, — when 
the  talk  was  broken  off  because  Mrs.  Penni- 
man  rose  and  took  the  others  out  on  the  shel- 
tered veranda. 

But  the  next  morning  early,  Friday,  on 
Don,  led  Caspar,  ready  saddled  and  bridled, 
through  the  village  street,  and  found  Mr. 
Geddes  waiting  for  him. 

Friday  gave  Mr.  Geddes  no  time  to  think 
how  long  it  was  since  he  had  crossed  a  saddle. 
He  sprang  upon  Don  again  after  his  new 
friend  had  mounted  Caspar,  told  him  simply 
what  his  uncle  had  said  as  to  the  road  they 
were  to  take,  and  as  soon  as  they  were  breath- 
ing the  horses  after  their  first  brisk  trot,  he 
brought  up  again  the  story  of  the  mad  ele- 
phant, and  almost  compelled  Mr.  Geddes  to 
finish  it.  But  it  seemed  as  if  there  were  a 
fate  in  that  story ;  of  a  sudden  a  frightened 
girl  sprang  from  the  doorway  of  a  house  which 
they  were  passing,  screaming  "Fire!  Fire! 
Fire!"  as  loud  as  she  could  scream.  The 


72  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

two  riders,  of  course,  checked  their  horses. 
In  a  moment  Friday  was  on  his  feet,  gave  his 
rein  to  his  companion,  and  ran  into  the  house. 

A  minute  more,  and  he  was  back  again. 
"  There  is  fire,"  said  he,  "  and  you  and  I  can- 
not put  it  out.  She  will  start  the  people  in 
that  house  before  we  can  ;  you  must  cross  the 
meadow  there, — see,  the  fence  is  down, — and 
on  that  yellow  church  is  a  fire  alarm,  I  saw 
the  box  as  we  came  by.  Do  you  ring  in  the 
fire-engines  from  the  village,  and  come  back 
here  as  soon  as  you  have  done  it." 

The  boy  gave  the  command  as  his  father 
would  have  commanded  a  battery  in  battle. 
And  Mr.  Geddes,  without  a  thought  of  ques- 
tioning him,  obeyed.  He  rode  well,  and  at  a 
light  canter  crossed  the  meadow  as  he  was 
bidden.  The  boy's  eye,  watching  right  and 
left,  had  not  deceived  him.  In  three  minutes 
from  the  time  the  child  cried  "  Fire !  "  every 
engine  company  in  Bromwich  had  the  alarm. 

In  three  minutes  more  Mr.  Geddes  was  at 
Friday's  side.  "How  quick  you  are,"  said 


FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


the  boy.  "Your  horse  will  be  safe  in  the 
cattle-shed,  —  leave  him  there  and  come  and 
help  us  with  these  carpets.  I  have  shut  up 
the  kitchen,  and  I  think  we  shall  stifle  it,  if 
only  those  Bromwich  fellows  know  their 
business."  And  when  Mr.  Geddes  came  back 
from  the  shed  he  found  Friday  and  a  black 
man  on  the  veranda,  dragging  a  large  carpet 
out  from  an  upper  window.  Before  he  knew 
it  he  was  himself  spreading  it  over  the  closed 
windows  of  the  room  below.  The  glass  had 
not  yet  given  way,  and  Friday  did  not  mean 
that  it  should.  Whether  his  plans  were  wise 
or  not,  we  can  never  tell.  His  carpet  had  been 
scarcely  spread  on  blinds  and  shutters,  and  he 
was  just  jumping  from  the  veranda  to  answer 
a  cry  from  the  basement,  when  they  heard 
the  glad  cry  of  "Put  her  through,  Swan," 
and  could  see  the  panting  horses  which  had 
brought  "  Swan  "  over  the  turnpike,  as  they 
swept  by  the  barn.  Friday  explained  his 
combinations  to  the  admiring  chief  engineer, 
showed  him  where  his  water  was  to  be  drawn, 


74  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

and  he  and  Mr.  Geddes,  from  their  position 
of  high  command,  sank  into  the  position  of 
obedient  subordinates.  Water  was  had  in  a 
few  minutes,  a  pipe  was  cautiously  introduced 
into  the  kitchen,  and  in  five  minutes  more  the 
whole  was  over. 

But,  as  the  chief  stepped  over  the  rafters 
from  which  the  boards  were  nearly  burned, 
he  said  to  Friday,  "  A  minute  more,  my  boy, 
and  neither  you  nor  I  nor  nobody  would  have 
had  much  to  do  here  but  to  pick  up  the 
pieces." 

It  was  clear  enough  that  what  he  said  was 
true.  Mr.  Geddes  was  even  effusive  in  thank- 
ing him  for  the  promptness  of  his  rescue. 
Friday  and  he  assured  the  frightened  women 
that  they  might  safely  put  things  to  rights, 
then  they  mounted  their  horses,  and  resumed 
their  ride. 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  ?$ 


CHAPTER  VI. 

"/COUSIN    JANE,"   said    Friday,    after 

^•x  they  returned  home,  "  I  talked  to  him 
like  a  father,  and  I  think  he  will  mind  me. 
Indeed,  I  told  him  just  what  my  father  has 
said  to  me  a  thousand  times." 

Jane  was  but  two  years  older  than  her 
cousin,  by  the  almanac,  but,  of  course,  this 
was  enough  to  make  him  think  she  was  his 
grandmother.  She  did  not  think  so  herself. 

"  What  did  you  tell  him  ? "  said  she,  laugh- 
ing. 

"I  told  him  that,  for  a  stout  fellow  like 
him,  who  could  cross  country  as  he  did  when 
well  mounted,  it  was  a  sin  and  a  shame  to 
shut  himself  up  and  mope.  Jane,  I  told  him 
it  was  ungrateful  to  the  good  God,  who  had 
given  him  such  legs  and  arms,  and  had  put 
into  the  world  horses  as  good  as  Don  and 


76  FOUR  AND  FIVE 

Caspar.  He  groaned  a  little  about  that,  but 
I  told  him,  what  my  father  says,  that  young 
men  cannot  begin  too  soon  to  be  of  some  use 
in  the  world.  I  did  not  say  so,  but  perhaps 
he  thought  I  thought  he  was  of  no  use  at  all !  " 

"  Well,"  said  Jane,  still  laughing,  "  for  a 
first  interview  you  did  go  a  good  way  !  " 

"  First  interview  ?  It  was  not  a  first  in- 
terview. It  was  the  second.  It  might  be  the 
last,  however,  and  I  was  not  going  to  have  as 
fine  a  fellow  as  that  on  my  conscience." 

But  of  this  there  was  now  no  danger.  Fri- 
day had  given  poor  Mr.  Geddes  just  the  push 
or  fillip  which  all  the  doctors  had  failed  to 
give  him ;  and  the  fortunate  incident  of  the 
fire,  with  the  success  of  their  efforts,  had  come 
just  at  the  right  time.  The  next  morning 
Friday  left  his  uncle  and  cousins  for  the  Poly- 
technic, unwillingly  enough.  But  he  took 
Mr.  Geddes  with  him  to  New  Altoona,  where 
the  Polytechnic  is  situated. 

"  Just  you  come  with  me,"  said  this  auda- 
cious ranchero.  "  Let  me  show  you  our 


FOUR^AND  FIVE.  77 

whole  shebang,  and  particularly  Macullar. 
There  is  a  man !  Why,  perhaps  Macullar 
would  take  you  to  Chihuahua  for  the  winter. 
Don't  I  wish  he  would  ask  me  to  go  !  I  should 
say  '  yes '  in  a  minute,  and  then  telegraph  for 
permission  after  I  had  packed  my  saddle-bags 
and  started.  Would  it  not  be  great  to  go  to 
Chihuahua  with  Mac  ! " 

Poor  Mr.  Geddes  had  hardly  ever  heard  of 
Chihuahua,  had  never  heard  of  this  magnifi- 
cent Mac.  But,  as  it  proved,  here  was  his 
destiny.  On  the  long  ride  in  the  train  to 
New  Altoona,  the  boy  Friday  fairly  took 
possession  of  his  friend.  Partly  by  his  story 
of  the  active  summer,  partly  by  the  brave 
forecast  of  the  future,  not  a  little  by  the  en- 
thusiasm with  which  he  spoke  of  his  country, 
and  what  he  owed  to  his  country,  he  started 
and  waked  this  poor  recluse,  who,  with  every 
opportunity  for  life,  had  shut  himself  up 
with  books,  alone,  and  looked  out  timidly,  as 
if  God  had  no  duty  for  him,  and  he  were  in 
no  place  in  God's  world. 


78  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

The  lesson  which  he  would  not  have  taken 
from  any  one  older  than  he  was,  seemed  like 
a  revelation  when  it  came  unconsciously, 
almost,  from  a  boy. 

THE  great  "Mac,"  to  whom  everything 
was  to  be  referred,  proved  to  be  a  very  little 
man.  He  seemed,  at  first  glance,  insignifi- 
cant. 

But  Mr.  Geddes  found  that  he  was  the 
hero  of  the  school,  and  he  did  not  wonder, 
when  he  saw  Mr.  Macullar  come  and  go 
among  these  boys  and  young  men. 

He  was  one  of  the  professors  of  mines  and 
metals. 

All  the  world  knows  that  the  Van  Ness 
Institute  had  great  fame  for  its  skill  in  mines 
and  metals,  and  the  boys  and  young  men 
were  quite  sure  that  to  "Mac,"  as  they  all 
called  him,  this  fame  was  due.  Without 
much  ceremony,  but  with  a  good  deal  of  feel- 
ing, Friday  introduced  his  new  friend  to  his 
old  friend. 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  79 

"  He  does  not  mean  to  stay  here,"  said 
the  boy,  eagerly.  "He  has  only  come  be- 
cause I  asked  him.  And  he  means  to  go 
back  to  his  old  books  and  muddling.  But  I 
tell  him  there  is  no  place  like  the  Van  Ness, 
and  no  man  like  Mac,  and  so  he  has  just 
come  over  to  see  us,  before  his  vacation 
is  quite  over."  Poor,  timid  Mr.  Geddes 
looked  on  rather  wistfully  as  the  active 
"  Mac  "  received  twenty  salutations  not  very 
unlike  this,  from  other  pupils  who  had  come 
in  the  same  train.  And  Mr.  Macullar  was 
not  too  eager  with  him.  He  respected  his 
morbid  shyness.  But,  all  the  same,  when  it 
was  time  for  luncheon  these  two  were  sitting 
together,  and  Mr.  Geddes  was  doing  fully 
his  share  of  the  talking.  And  it  ended,  to 
Friday's  delight,  ten  days  after,  when  Mr. 
Macullar' s  field-party  went  off  to  Mexico  for 
the  winter.  Friday  was  not  asked  to  go, 
and  had  not  hoped  to  be  asked.  No  one 
from  his  class  could  go.  But  Mr.  Geddes 
was  in  no  class,  and  was  asked,  and  did  go. 


8O  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

"  I  'do  not  see  what  I  can  do,"  said  he, 
meekly,  after  he  had  accepted  the  invitation. 

"  Do  ? "  said  Mr.  Macullar.  "  Any  one 
can  find  enough  to  do,  if  only  he  wants  to 
'Lend  a  Hand.'" 


IN  after  years  the  boys  always  called  Mr. 
Geddes  "  Ged,"  and  he  sometimes  forgot 
that  he  had  any  other  name.  But  his  real 
name,  as  he  entered  it  the  next  summer  on 
the  calendar  of  the  "Four  and  Five,"  to 
Which  he  was  admitted  on  Friday's  nomina- 
tion, was  Nathaniel  Torrey  Geddes.  And 
one  letter  from  him  of  that  winter  must  be 
enough  to  show  how  far  he  had  been  rescued 
from  eating  up  his  own  heart,  which  is  the 
sorriest  of  diseases. 

N.  T.  GEDDES  TO  "  FRIDAY." 

SAN  JUAN  DES  DOLORES     \ 
ii  ENERO.— MIDNIGHT,  j" 

"Dear  Friday: — You  need  not  look  for 
this  capital  on  any  map.  It  never  was  on 
any  till  we  put  it  on,  and  the  only  copy  of 
ours  is  in  my  bag  now.  I  write  at  midnight, 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  8 1 

instead  of  going  to  bed,  as  I  ought  to  do,  be- 
cause you  have  been  so  good  in  writing,  and 
I  so  bad.  But  I  tell  you,  Friday,  if  you 
mean  to  feed  as  hungry  a  crowd  as  this,  it  is 
'  boots  and  saddle '  early  every  morning,  and 
it  is  polenta  and  tomato-can  late  at  night. 
You  know  I  know  nothing  about  lodes,  and 
veins,  and  eyes,  and  sumps,  and  other  under- 
ground palabras.  But  I  do  know  about 
breakfast,  and  dinner,  and  supper,  and  my 
business  is  to  see  that  two  or  three  hundred 
meji,  of  all  colors  and  shapes,  do  not  starve. 
I  tell  you,  Friday,  when  we  hear  of  two  or 
three  steers,  or  some  old  woman  who  has 
some  hens,  we  go  for  them !  I  wish  you 
could  see  my  party.  I  have  one  raw-boned 
Navajo,  whom  we  picked  up  when  we  went 
up  to  the  mines ;  I  have  three  melancholy- 
looking  peon  boys,  who  cannot  understand 
why  these  Welshmen  of  ours  want  anything 
but  their  eternal  tortillas  ;  I  have  one  genuine 
Yankee  from  Coos  County,  New  Hampshire, 
as  he  told  a  Mexican  colonel  yesterday. 
6 


82  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

Sometimes  we  go  together,  and  sometimes 
we  go  alone.  But  our  business  is  to  see  that 
the  command  does  not  subsist  on  canned 
meat  or  polenta  alone. 

"Sometimes  we  go  out  on  the  plains  to 
take  our  chances  for  a  shot.  The  antelopes 
are  not  all  gone,  and  there  are  a  few  birds,  if 
the  wind  is  the  right  way. 

"But  I  must  go  to  bed.  See,  I  spelled 
way  with  an  'eigh'  the  first  time.  This 
means  I  am  sleepy.  I  laughed  at  your  last 
letter,  in  which  you  warned  me  of  the  danger 
of  reading  too  much.  All  my  books,  except 
my  New  Testament,  are  at  the  bottom  of  the 
Colorado  River,  or  were  when  I  heard  from 
them  last.  And,  if  they  were  not,  I  have  not 
seen  the  minute  since  last  Monday  when 
I  could  have  looked  at  one  of  them.  I  do 
know  the  difference  between  a  buzzard  and 
an  antelope,  but  do  not  ask  me  the  difference 
between  A  and  izzard." 

Friday  sent  this  letter  to  his  cousin  Jane, 
and  told  her  to  show  it  to  Dr.  Milnes.  "  I 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  83 

think  my  pupil  is  finding  out  how  to  look  out 
and  not  in,  and  what  it  is  to  lend  a  hand,"  he 
said.  "I  do  not  think  the  Doctor  need 
bother  the  Retreat  people  this  winter." 


THIS  is  only  one  story  of  nine  which  might 
be  told  as  to  that  winter,  as  the  Four  and 
Five  spent  it.  How  dear  old  Mah-mah  had 
spent  it  shall  be  shown  in  our  next  chapter. 
This  must  be  enough,  for  the  present,  to  in- 
troduce Ged  in  the  company  of  the  FOUR 
AND  FIVE,  when,  at  the  end  of  June,  they  all 
gathered  again  at  the  camp-ground.  Friday 
pretended  that  he  was  a  distinguished  Span- 
ish Hidalgo ;  "  the  hero  of  three  wars,"  he 
said,  "  and  crowned  with  laurel  by  a  grateful 
country."  Bronzed  or  browned  indeed,  with 
a  black  beard  and  a  long  moustache,  "  Ged  " 
looked  little  enough  like  the  morbid,  timid, 
wretched  youth  whom  Friday  had  startled  by 
proclaiming  the  Four  Mottoes  at  the  high  tea 
at  his  uncle's. 


84  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

THEY  two  were  early  on  the  ground  of  the 
now  historic  camp,  because  much  was  to  be 
done  in  the  way  of  preparation.  The  Van 
Ness  vacation  began  a  week  earlier  than  the 
other  vacations.  It  was  already  sure  that 
each  boy  of  last  year's  eight  would  bring 
another  with  him,  as  Friday  had  done,  and 
arrangements  had  to  be  made  for  so  large  a 
party.  "  If  there  is  any  foraging  to  do,"  said 
Mr.  Geddes,  "you  can  trust  me  for  that." 
But  at  first  there  was  more  than  foraging. 
The  whole  camp  was  to  be  moved  higher  up 
from  the  stream.  This  meant  that  quite  a 
little  clearing  was  to  be  made  in  the  edge  of 
the  wood,  and  some  old .  stumps  and  logs  to 
be  taken  away.  Friday  had  brought  up  from 
New  York  three  tents  with  him,  and  some 
canvas,  which  he  meant  to  stretch,  on -a  plan 
of  his  own,  for  the  dining-room.  He  did  not 
know  when  any  of  the  other  fellows  would 
come,  he  said ;  when  they  did  come  he  knew 
that  half  of  them  would  be  green-horns  or 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  85 

tender-feet,  and  it  would  be  better  to  have 
all  these  preparations  out  of  the  way. 

And  now,  oddly  enough,  it  was  another 
case  of  "Teacher  Taught."  For,  with  all 
his  confidence  and  assumption,  the  boy  found 
out  soon  enough  that  "Ged"  knew  much 
more  of  camp-life,  its  necessities  and  its  re- 
sources, than  he  did.  Old  Mah-mah  had  not 
lived  in  the  mountains  for  forty  years  with- 
out more  practical  knowledge,  ten-fold,  than 
they  both  had  together.  The  affair  of  the 
bridge  had  won  for  the  camp  the  ready  and 
intelligent  help  of  poor  old  Coram,  whom 
they  had  pulled  through  his  trouble.  In  all 
their  new  arrangements  they  had  his  "un- 
covenanted  and  unpaid  alliance."  And  when, 
therefore,  on  Saturday  night,  four  of  the  club 
tramped  across  from  the  station  at  Lovelace, 
with  three  "  tender-feet "  whom  they  had  en- 
listed, they  were  encouraged  by  the  sight  of 
a  good  fire  of  chestnut  and  oak,  by  the  smell 
of  "fry" — time  would  reveal  what  was 
fried — by  the  hospitable  look  of  four  tents, 


86  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

each  lighted  by  its  own  lantern  ;  and  the 
hemlock  was  fresh-cut  and  spread  on  which 
each  way-farer  was  to  lie  after  he  had  thrown 
down  his  knapsack. 

With    such  welcome    the    third  summer 
camp  of  FOUR  AND  FIVE  began. 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  8/ 


CHAPTER  VII. 

A  ND  it  seemed  worth  while  to  tell  the 
story  of  the  meeting  in  such  detail, 
lest  the  eager  reader,  skipping  from  one  point 
to  another,  might  not  believe  that  four  boys, 
meeting  for  a  summer  holiday,  did  count  up 
as  eighteen  when  they  came  together.  The 
reader  must  be  made  to  understand  that  the 
little  tent  under  which  they  slept  grew,  in  so 
short  a  time,  to  be  an  encampment,  and  that 
the  enterprises  in  which  they  engaged  took 
on  more  dignity  and  more. 

As  for  Coram,  he  was  a  new  man.  Indeed, 
the  place  was  a  new  place.  The  tide  of 
travel  had  returned,  as  the  bridge  proved 
itself  worthy  of  use;  and  as  the  railroad 
brought  more  and  more  people  up  to  the 
mountains,  more  and  more  stragglers  found 
the  convenience  of  this  short  cut.  Corara, 


FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


to  his  surprise,  found  that  his  forge-fire  was 
lighted  every  day.  If  there  were  no  shoes 
to  be  set,  there  was  an  accumulation  of  back- 
work,  which  had  been  waiting  while  he  was 
at  work  on  the  unshod  horses  of  the  neigh- 
borhood. Just  in  the  glad  pressure  of  his 
own  work,  one  of  his  sons  had  returned  from 
Montana,  with  the  accumulations  resulting 
from  his  prospecting  there.  He  was  glad 
enough  to  take  hold  "  for  a  spell "  at  the 
forge,  and  the  two  gave  it  a  reputation  in  all 
the  neighborhood. 

Blondin  Coram  had  been  named  for  the 
celebrated  rope-walker.  He  had  left  the 
forge  when  he  was  sixteen  years  old,  now 
five  years  ago.  He  was  a  little  older,  there- 
fore, than  Guthrie,  who  was  the  oldest  of 
our  boys,  as  we  fondly  call  the  founders  of 
FOUR  AND  FIVE.  And  the  experience  of 
mankind  which  he  had  gained,  as  he  knocked 
about  the  Western  world,  was  far  beyond 
that  of  any  of  them.  Friday  himself,  who 
was  the  farthest  from  his  home,  could  not 


FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


compare  with  Blondin  in  the  range  of  his  sto- 
ries. If  life  had  seemed  a  little  dull  to  Blon- 
din, as  he  passed  the  winter  and  spring  with 
his  father  in  the  old  home,  it  opened  with 
only  the  more  zest  now  that  he  found  himself 
in  a  crowd  of  young  fellows,  some  with  the 
airs  of  old  mountaineers,  some  betraying  at 
every  step  that  they  were  tender-feet  indeed. 

He  was  a  clean,  simple-minded  fellow,  who 
had  picked  up  no  harm  in  his  prospecting. 
It  was  queer  to  see  how  many  Spanish  and 
Californian  and  other  Western  phrases  had 
stuck  to  his  original  Dutch-English-Yankee 
dialect  in  that  time.  It  was  clear  enough 
that  he  had  seen  vice  in  its  dirtiest  forms 
enough  to  have  been  well  disgusted  by  it. 

When  he  found  that  our  boys  of  the  origi- 
nal FOUR  AND  FIVE,  and  of  their  nine  associ- 
ates, liked  to  hear  his  yarns,  he  fell  quite  into 
the  habit  of  coming  up  to  their  camp-fire  in 
the  evenings,  and,  of  the  group,  he  was  the 
chief  story-teller. 


9°  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

"  What  do  you  mean  by  prospecting,  any 
way  ? "  said  Hanger,  one  evening. 

"Why,  he  means  looking  for  silver,"  said 
Wallace. 

"Of  course  he  does.  But  how  does  he 
look  ?  He  does  not  expect  to  find  it  on  the 
trees.  And  he  knows  that  he  will  not  find 
ten-cent  pieces  in  the  gravel.  How  do  you 
prospect,  Blondin  ? 

"  Well,  in  a  country  such  as  that  is,  you 
know  you  have  to  travel  on  a  trail  or  in  the 
streams — same  as  we  do  here.  Now  in  the 
trails  there's  no  good  chance,  so  many  of  the 
other  fellows  hes  been  there  before.  Some 
men,  they  goes  alone,  because  they're  afraid 
their  pards  will  get  all  the  good.  But  I'm 
never  afraid  of  my  pard,  and  I  hain't  had  no 
reason  to  be.  'N'  if  you  have  a  pard  you've 
better  chances  every  way ;  hunting,  camping 
— well,  all  prospecting  is  a  great  deal  easier 
for  having  a  pard." 

"  Right  you  are  there,"  said  Friday,  and 
the  rest  grunted  approval. 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  91 

"  Well,  then,  you  start  in  the  bed  of  the 
stream — generally  you  work  up — 'n'  all  the 
time  you're  looking  for  silver.  No,  not  for 
ten-cent  pieces,  nor  nickels,  nor  yet  Mexican 
dollars,  but  you  look  at  all  the  stones  you  see, 
to  see  if  they  looks  dark  brown,  or  black,  or 
with  some  red,  maybe ;  if  they  looks  heavy. 
That's  what  you  want,  'n'  you  don't  care  what 
color  it  is,  if  it's  heavy.  So  you  heft  one, 
and  you  throw  it  away,  and  you  heft  another, 
'n'  you  throw  it  away.  That's  why  you  don't 
want  to  have  your  hands  full  of  other  things, 
you  know,  because  you  want  to  pick  up  the 
stones  to  heft  'em. 

"Well,  if  you  have  luck,  you  know,  you 
find  a  bit  of  stone — no  matter  if  it's  small,  no 
matter  if  it's  big — 'n'  it's  heavy.  You  know 
that  right  away — it's  heavy.  Then  where 
did  it  come  from  ?  That's  the  next  question. 
It  wasn't  made  there  in  that  river-bed.  It 
had  come  there.  Maybe  it  had  come  down 
stream  ten,  twenty,  forty  miles.  Maybe  it 
had  come  so  from  some  mine  that  everybody 


92  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

knows,  above  you.  But  maybe  it  had  rolled 
down  the  side  of  the  hill  there — this  side ; 
that  side.  In  course,  if  it's  very  big,  the 
chances  is  more  that  it  did  roll  down  just 
where  you  be,  where  you  found  it.  But  you 
can't  tell  till  you've  tried.  So  you  spot  the 
place,  'n'  first  you  look  to  be  sure  there's  any 
more  stuff  like  it,  'n'  if  there  is  why,  of  course, 
there's  more  chance  of  an  out-crop  on  the 
hill  above  where  you  found  it.  Well,  maybe 
it's  this  side,  maybe  it's  that  side.  You  try 
one,  'n'  your  pard  tries  the  other.  You  have 
to  crawl,  most  likely,  on  your  hands  and  feet. 
I  mean  the  hill-side's  as  steep  as  it  is  here  up 
the  run  where  your  coon-trap  is,  Michael, 
where  you  caught  the  skunk." 

And  here  there  was  a  general  laugh. 

"  Maybe  you  have  to  cut  away  the  brush. 
That's  what  you  have  your  short-handled  axe 
for.  You  see  you  want  to  find  where  that 
bit  of  stone  come  down  from.  Maybe  it's 
twenty  yards  from  the  bottom.  Maybe  it's 
half  a  mile.  Maybe — most  like — it  come 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  93 


from  nowhere,  'n'  you  have  to  give  it  up, 
because  you  can't  find  it.  'N'  then  you  go 
on,  and  prospect  more." 

And  Blondin  laughed,  rather  sadly,  at  his 
own  joke,  as  if  this  had  happened  to  him 
often. 


94  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

""DUT  that  feller,  my  pard— he  was  the 
only  pard  I  ever  had — he  stuck  like  a 
burr  to  me  'n'  I  stuck  like  a  burr  to  him : 
that  feller,  Inez,  he  never  gin  up  any  chance 
till  we  knew,  cock-sure,  whether  there  was 
out-crop  or  not.  He  would  go  on,  and  on, 
nosing  up,  like  a  Washita  setter.  If  there 
was  a  bluff  like,  hundred  feet  high,  that  feller, 
Inez,  would  find  some  way  to  scrabble  up, 
and  would  try  every  ledge  in  it,  with  his 
hammer,  till  he  was  cock-sure." 

"  A  man  named  Inez  ? "    said  Hanger. 

"  What's  a  Washita  setter  ? "  said  Friday 

"  How  was  he  sure  ? "  said  Eveleth. 

"One  to  once,"  replied  Blondin,  laughing. 
"  Better  let  me  have  my  own  way.  We've  all 
summer  before  us,  and  if  there's  any  silver  in 
these  hills  we'll  know  it  before  cold.  I  tell 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  95 

you  there  was  mighty  good  stuff  in  my  pard, 
else  we  wouldn't  have  held  together  as  we 
did.  'N'  as  for  his  keeping  on  as  he  did,  he 
was  of  that  kind  that  does  keep  on — he  could 
not  help  it." 

Harrison  could  not  help  saying,  in  an  aside 
to  Guthrie,  "He  looked  forward,  and  not 
back." 

"Just  so,"  said  Blondin,  catching  the  words. 
"  He  did,  V  he  does  now.  Wish  he  was 
here.  That  feller's  always  sure  things'll 
come  out  well.  And,  faith,  where  he's  about, 
they  generally  do.  It's  a  way  he  had.  'N' 
when  you're  in  camp  with  him,  as  you  lie  by 
the  fire,  same  as  we  do  now,  talkin'  half- 
Spanish  and  half -Yankee,  he  doesn't  know  it, 
'n'  you  don't  know  it,  but  you  talk  about 
next  Christmas,  or  you  tell  how  you'll  arrange 
for  the  tailings  in  the  mine  you're  going  to 
find,  or  you  make  the  plan  for  the  breast  and 
the  over-head.  You  never  get  on  the  old 
story — of  this  feller  was  killed,  'n'  that  feller 
broke  his  leg. 


96  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

"I  asked  Inez  one  day  how  he  was  so 
cheerful-like,  and  I  says  to  him  that  was  why 
all  the  fellers  liked  him,  'n'  wanted  him  to  go 
shares  with  them.  'N'  he  kind  o'  laughed, 
'n'  he  says,  says  he,  'Amigo  mio,  if  it  was 
my  trail,  nada-nada, — nothing  much  at  toder 
end  of  him  ;  nada, — nothing  at  all.  But  no, 
no  ;  not  my  trail.  Dios  bueno, — good  God, — 
he  make  trail,  he  make  me.' 

"Now,  fellers,"  said  Blondin,  half -frightened 
at  his  own  confession  of  faith,  "  I  don't  know 
how  you  like  that  talk,  but  it  seemed  to  me 
he  stated  it  mighty  well." 

"Why  yes,"  said  Harrison,  "that  greaser, 
as  you  call  him,  seems  to  '  Look  up,  and  not 
down.'  "  But  Blondin  did  not,  at  the  moment, 
"  catch  on  "  to  this  declaration.  He  paused 
a  moment — evidently  far  away,  in  his  thought, 
from  the  camp-fire  and  the  Kaatskills — then 
started  suddenly,  and  said  : — 

"The  longest  time  we  was  ever  parted 
when  we  was  out  prospectin',  my  pard  and 
me,  was  from  Sabbath  day  round  to  Sab- 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  97 

bath  day.  We  was  in  the  Bloody  Gulch,  you 
know — well,  two  days  above  Gallows  Creek — 
three  days ;  'n'  we  was  mendin'  up,  'n' 
making  a  cache  of  stones,  'n'  such  like,  we 
didn't  want  to  lug  no  furder.  'N'  I  had 
strained  that  toe — rock  fell  on  it,  or  sunthin' 
— 'n'  I  limped  bad,  I  tell  you.  'N'  Inez — 
that's  my  pard — he  says,  says  he,  '  You  keep 
camp  here,  two  days,  three  days.  I  find  this 
lead, — good  lead,  best  lead  yet.  I  take  pork, 
you  keep  rizo.'  Rizo,  that's  how  they  say 
hedge-hog,  'n'  we  had  a  hedge-hog  I  had 
brained  that  mornin'.  So  he  went  off,  'n'  I 
just  hobbled  'round.  Went  down  in  the 
gulch  again,  'n'  got  more  of  them  samples, — 
good  samples  they  was,  too.  If  I  had  'em  in 
New  York ! '  And  he  smiled  broadly.  "  All 
that  day  I  made  my  pile,  only  it  was  of  sam- 
ples." 

And  here  Blondin  made  another  of  his 
long  pauses  ;  but  now  the  others  did  not  in- 
terrupt him. 

"And  the  next  day,  'n'  the  next  'n'  the 
7 


FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


next.  'N'  then  I  knew  suthin'  had  befallen 
him.  I  knew  he  was  all  right  —  or  all  wrong. 
The  hedge-hog  was  ate,  I  tell  you  ;  'n'  I 
marched  up  that  gulch,  'n'  down  that  gulch  ; 
and  I  crawled  up  hill,  'n'  I  slid  down  hill  'n' 
I  saw  no  more  hedge-hogs.  'N'  I  took  to  red- 
skin onions,  'n'  to  pignut  tea,  'n'  I  tell  you,  fel- 
lows, they's  neither  on  'em  fillin',  though  the 
price  is  small.  But  I  had  said  I  would  stay 
till  he  come  back,  'n'  I  should  ev  staid  if  the 
bottles  of  heaven  had  busted,  'n'  the  old  gulch 
ev  filled  up  wid  water.  I  should  ev  staid  — 
only  kind  o'  crawlin'  up  the  side,  you  know, 
as  it  rose."  And  Blondin  gravely  pointed 
out  an  imaginary  trail  on  the  hillside  opposite 
them,  which  appeared,  distinctly  enough,  in 
the  moonlight.  He  paused  again,  but  the 
boys  said  nothing  now.  The  man  was  too 
earnest  to  be  laughed  at,  or  interrupted. 

"Sabba'-day  mornin'  —  that  was  six  days 
'n'  half,  you  see,  sense  he  was  gone  —  Sabba'- 
day  mornin',  as  I  was  haulin'  a  bit  o'  drift  for 
the  fire,  I  heard  a  crushin'  'n'  a  smashin'  'n'  I 


FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


knew  somebody  bed  come.  But  I  was  down 
in  the  hollow,  'n'  I  thought  it  was  a  stray 
burro,  what  had  been  down  twice  before.  I 
tell  you,  I  was  so  hungry  that  ef  I  had  had 
any  tool,  I  would  ha'  shot  that  'ere  burro 
afore  then,  and  ate  mule  meat  or  burro  meat 
for  supper.  So  I  did  not  mind  first  time  ask- 
in',  but  a  minute  more  I  hears  Inez.  '  Ami — 
go,'  sez  he,  and  wasn't  I  glad  !  I  limped  up 
to  meet  him,  where  I  had  cut  the  brush  away, 
'n'  he  did  not  know,  to  a  place  I  had  to  sit  in 
when  the  wind  was  in  the  nord ;  'n'  sure 
enough,  he  come  in,  dirty  as  a  pictur',  'n'  bent 
down,  'most  a  same  ez  ef  he  was  that  burro  I 
thought  he  was."  And  Blondin  laughed  at 
his  own  conceit. 

"  What  did  he  have  ?  What  did  he  not 
have  ?  You  might  say  he  had  this  hat,  and 
them  boots,  and  this  suit  of  clothes  I  am  wear- 
in'  on,  'n'  that  jack-knife,  and  a  lot  more,  see- 
in'  they  all  come  out  of  that  bag  later  or  sooner. 
He  had  this  bag  of  samples — stones,  you 
know — not  so  big,  but  I  tell  you  heavy,  forty, 


100  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

fifty-five,  sixty-seven,  one  on  'em  panned  out 
when  we  took  her  to  Argo ;  hundr'  'n'  ten 
pound  he  had  in  that  bag,  ef  he  had  an  ounce. 
'N'  on  his  back,  beside  the  bag,  he  had  a 
quarter  of  an  antelope,  'cause  he  knew  his 
old  pard  was  a  starvin',  while  he  was  revelin' 
in  antelope  venzn.  'N'  he  had  his  gun,'n'  his 
flask ;  but  not  his  hammer  nor  his  axe,  I  tell 
you.  No,  nor  his  tooth-brush," — this  with  a 
laugh  like  Natty  Bumpo's — "he'd  made  a 
cache  on  'em. 

"  I  tell  you,  fellows,  that  Inez,  that  good 
pard  o'  mine,  hed  lost  the  trail  the  first  day. 
He  was  all  outside  the  divide.  By  all  minin' 
law,  'n'  by  our  agreement,  he  was  all  free  from 
any  bond  to  me.  We  was  only  to  prospect 
in  Bloody  Gulch.  He  got  an  orful  fall,  rollin' 
down  some  gulch  sides  over  by  Bethel-Run. 
He  lay  a  day,  with  a  lame  foot  under  him. 
When  he  got  up  he  see  a  big  grey  rock. 
There's  a  little  bit  of  it."  And  Blondin  took 
it  out  from  his  pocket-book.  "  'N'  he  sees  it 
was  the  right  stuff,  'N'  he  seemed  to  forget 


FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


his  smashed  toes,  'n'  he  went  for  the  side  o 
the  hill — 'n',  long  story  short,  he  placed,  's — 
well,  's  well  's  I  can  place  my  father's  front 
door-step  yonder,  'n'  where  he  placed  it,  fellers, 
that's  where  they  have  the  Colchis  mine  now. 
An'  that  mine  was  his  that  day,  's  much  as 
your  jack-knife's  yours,  Mr.  Guthrie.  'N' 
when  he'd  drove  his  pegs  in  for  his  claim,  'n' 
when  he'd  taken  all  his  bearin's,  so's  to  be 
cocksure,  's  you  said,  then  that  feller  he 
comes  back  to  me,  to  tell  his  story.  Lost 
his  way,  you  see, — couldn't  help  losin'  it—- 
twice he  lost  it ;  but  then  he  comes  out  by 
the  blazed  trail  above  Trennum's,  an'  so  over 
the  divide  agin,  an'  found  me.  He  was  afraid 
I  should  be  half -starved,  so  he'd  killed  an 
antelope,  'n'  he  come  down  to  me.  He  had 
with  him,  you  see,  what  meant, — well,  it 
meant  five  thousand  dollars,  'n'  he  might  'a' 
kep'  the  whole  of  it,  'n'  he  brought  it  down 
to  share  'n'  share,  just  because  he  loved  his 
neighbor  better'n  he  did  hisself."  And  Blon- 
din  smiled  with  his  pleasant  smile  again. 


IO2  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

The  boys  waited  a  moment,  to  see  if  more 
were  to  come  from  the  story-teller,  and  then 
Guthrie  said : — 

"  Fellows,  this  Mr.  Inez,  whose  name  is  yet 
to  be  explained  to  us,  seems  to  know  how  to 
'look  out  and  not  in,'  and  certainly  knows 
how  to  '  lend  a  hand.'  Blondin  says  he  '  looks 
up  and  not  down,'  and  'looks  forward  and 
not  back.'  I  move  he  be  chosen  into  the 
Four  and  Five."  And  this  was  done,  with 
great  uplifting  of  hands  and  hurrahing.  And 
then,  for  the  first  time,  it  was  explained  to 
Blondin  what  a  Lend  a  Hand  Club  was,  and 
Blondin  also  was  admitted  into  the  great  com- 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  1 03 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

«  '"T^HE  news  is,"  said  Friday,  "that  there 
has  not  been  a  drop  of  rain  on  the 
Princess's  potatoes  since  Michaelmas,  or  since 
St.  Swithin's  day,  or  any  other  peg  that  she 
hangs  the  weather  on.  I  am  going  over  again 
to-morrow  to  haul  some  water  for  them,  and  as 
many  more  fellows  as  want  to  Lend  a  Hand 
had  better  turn  out  and  help.  I  am  going  to 
hire  old  Coram's  mare,  and  Mah-mah  will 
show  me  how  to  rig  a  barrel,  or  I  shall  show 
her.  I've  seen  it  done  on  the  pampas,  but 
she  thinks  she  knows  a  better  way." 

"  What  is  all  this  ? "  asked  Eveleth,  rolling 
over  in  his  hammock,  and  dropping  his  vol- 
ume of  the  "Three  Guardsmen."  "What  is 
all  this  ?  Operations  of  irrigation,  and  the 
consulting  civil  engineer  from  the  Polytech- 
nic not  consulted." 


IO4  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

"Not  consulted,  by  a  long  chalk,  captain, 
the  matters  in  hand  relating  to  modern  life, 
and  not  having  been  studied  by  mediaeval 
masters." 

Eveleth  took  the  chaff  good-naturedly,  said 
that  it  was  highly  necessary  that  he  should 
take  a  lesson,  and  that  he  would  volunteer 
under  Friday's  instructions.  "  But  I  think 
it  will  be  no  harm  to  take  along  a  mediaeval 
bar,  and  Coram's  classical  pick-axe.  If  any- 
body will  carry  the  pick  I  will  take  the  bar." 
But  Friday  said  the  picks  could  ride  on  the 
mare. 

And  so  a  large  party  of  volunteers  assem- 
bled at  early  cock-crowing.  For  there  was 
no  alarm  clock,  and,  excepting  such  signals 
as  one  or  two  old  roosters  of  Coram's  chose 
to  give,  these  boys  might  have  slept  the  sleep 
of  the  just  every  day  till  the  sun  stole  into 
the  south  openings  of  their  tents.  But,  on 
this  occasion,  there  was  scarcely  any  pale 
gray  on  the  eastern  sky  when  Norman  put 
his  coffee-pot  on  the  embers  of  the  bivouac 


FOUR  AND  FIVE  IO5 

fire,  and  cut  the  slices  of  pork  for  his  frying- 
pan. 

And  to-day  there  was  no  missing  the  trail 
between  the  camp  and  old  Mah-mah's  clear- 
ing. All  the  boys  were  better  woodsmen 
— that  was  one  thing.  But,  more  than  that, 
the  old  woman  had  become  such  an  amusing, 
not  to  say  essential,  member  of  their  corpo- 
ration, that  no  week  passed  without  one  or 
more  excursions  to  and  fro.  There  had  been 
a  great  business  in  basket-making,  in  which 
she  gave  all  the  available  teaching.  There 
were  experiments  in  cooking,  where  she  could 
give  the  needed  instructions  nowhere  but  on 
her  own  stove.  And  it  was  such  fun  to  hear 
her  tell  stories  that  if  she  did  not  come  to 
them,  some  of  the  boys  went  over  to  see  her, 
with  some  bit  of  tribute  perhaps,  or  an  offer- 
ing of  real  love  to  one  who  was  always  "so 
clever."  But,  as  it  happened,  whoever  had 
been  there  last  had  seen  and  heard  nothing 
of  the  potatoes.  And,  without  Friday's  care- 
ful habit  of  keeping  his  eyes  open,  quickened 


I  Ob  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

by  his  loyalty  to  her,  the  club  would  not  have 
known  that  she  was  in  trouble. 

There  were  hopes,  as  they  marched,  that 
they  might  come  in  on  her  in  time  to  start 
her  fire.  But  this  was  absurd.  The  blue 
smoke  rose  high  above  the  cabin,  across  the 
hemlocks  of  the  background,  as  the  boys  ran 
down  the  slope  by  which  they  came  to  the 
open  clearing. 

All  the  same  she  expressed  her  surprise, 
and  scolded  them  that  they  had  not  told  her 
that  they  were  coming,  so  that  she  might 
have  been  ready  for  them. 

"  Now  ye'z  all  so  clem  that  ye'll  eat  the 
nails  out  o'  the  door,  'n'  the  house  will  tum- 
ber  down,"  she  said,  as  the  boys  flung  them- 
selves on  the  grass  before  the  door-step. 

But  Friday  and  Norman  told  her  that  this 
was  a  party  for  work,  and  not  for  fooling  or 
eating,  and,  first  of  all,  that  she  was  not  to 
go  to  cooking  for  the  fifteen  of  them.  And 
Harrison,  who  had  the  commissariat  in  hand, 
produced  his  stores  on  the  grass.  The  ut- 


FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


most  they  would  let  her  do  was  to  make  some 
more  coffee  for  them. 

"  Short  exhortations  heed,"  said  Friday. 
"  If  I  am  captain  of  this  party  we  are  to  go 
to  work  in  the  cool  of  the  day,  Spanish  fash- 
ion." 

And  then  Mah-mah's  barrels  were  pro- 
duced. One,  an  old  water  barrel,  from  the 
corner  of  the  cabin,  which,  on  the  whole, 
proved  best  for  the  purpose.  Two,  well- 
made  flour  barrels,  —  "  bad,  but  not  so  bad," 
as  the  careful  Eveleth  admitted.  He  had 
'  grave  thoughts  of  digging  out  from  the 
ground  an  old  cask,  which  he  declared  had 
once  held  West  India  molasses,  but  which 
had  been  the  well-curb  of  some  sixty  years 
bygone. 

On  the  back  of  the  mare  pretty  much 
everything  was  brought  which  was  needed 
by  the  various  constructors.  More  than  one 
of  these  boys  had  -  been  trained,  under  our 
good  modern  system,  to  a  decent  use  of  car- 
penters' tools.  The  heads  of  three  barrels 


108  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

were  well  hooped  and  strengthened,  and  a 
long  square  axle  was  passed  through  each 
barrel,  as  if  it  had  been  a  very  thick  mill- 
stone. Then  the  ends  of  this  axle  were  care- 
fully rounded,  and  so  the  boys  had  three 
barrels  which  could  be  drawn  up  hill  by  the 
mare,  as  she  might  draw  the  front  wheels  of 
a  carryall,  if  they  had  slipped  out  from  the 
carriage  and  left  it  on  the  turnpike.  So  soon 
as  Eveleth  had  got  this  well  under  way,  he 
took  a  working  party  down  to  the  road  itself, 
to  see  how  the  water  was  to  be  brought,  and 
here  he  had  the  principal  work  of  the  fore- 
noon. But  by  one  and  another  change  of 
this  mountain  path, — for  it  was  hardly  better, 
— by  a  good  deal  of  digging  and  trying,  and 
in  one  instance  by  laying  a  little  bit  of  cor- 
duroy, he  had  made,  before  three  o'clock,  a 
practicable  ascent,  and  at  three  o'clock,  with 
great  triumph,  they  filled  their  first  cask  at 
the  brook,  and  made  old  Betty  drag  it  up 
their  new-made  plane.  When  they  asked 
Eveleth  why  he  had  three  barrels,  he  said 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  1 09 

they  would  find  out  soon  enough,  for  he 
really  supposed  that  each  one  was  too  weak 
for  long  work  in  the  business  entrusted  to  it. 
But  he  had  been  careful  to  carry  over  a  lot 
of  extra  hoops,  or  the  material  for  making 
them,  and,  as  it  proved,  his  first  cask  did  its 
work  thoroughly  well.  There  was  hardly  any 
leakage,  and  when  it  was  at  the  level  of  the 
potato-field  it  seemed  in  as  good  condition  as 
when  it  started. 

Readers  who  have  never  seen  water  drawn 
in  this  way  must  understand  that  at  the  brook 
half  a  dozen  boys  with  pails  filled  the  barrel 
full,  that  it  was  then  very  tightly  corked,  at 
a  hole  made  in  the  middle,  the  cork  being  se- 
cured so  that  it  should  certainly  not  start. 
The  mare  then  drew  the  whole  up  the  hill, 
the  barrel  was  turned  on  its  side  and  left  to 
empty  itself  slowly  through  the  same  bung- 
hole,  while  the  mare  returned  for  another 
load  to  the  foot  of  the  hill. 

Eveleth  watched,  well  satisfied  with  the 
success  of  this  experiment,  which  was  wholly 


IIO  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

new  to  him.  He  could  only  trust  Blondin 
and  Friday,  who  had  seen  the  same  thing 
done  in  the  mountains  and  in  South  America, 
but  when  he  was  sure  that  it  worked  well  he 
took  two  or  three  of  the  boys  with  him  up 
the  stream,  for  he  said  he  would  never  leave 
old  Mah-mah  again  in  such  a  scrape,  and  that 
he  was  sure  her  plantation  could  be  irrigated. 
It  was  the  first  time  that  this  potato-patch 
and  the  corn-rows  at  its  side  had  been  dig- 
nified by  the  name  of  a  plantation. 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  Ill 


CHAPTER  IX. 


more  we  recollect  that  "one  boy 
will  do  half  as  much  work  as  a  man, 
that  two  boys  together  will  do  a  quarter  as 
much,  and  that  three  boys  will  do  no  work 
at  all." 

Never  was  an  old  saw  less  true  than  this, 
in  the  work  of  the  Irrigation  Party. 

The  old  saw,  indeed,  may  be  modified  so 
as  to  say  that  when  boys  work  for  those  they 
love,  they  do  much  more  work  than  the  aver- 
age men  with  the  average  motive  do. 

These  boys  were  well  led.  Eveleth  showed 
them,  before  half  an  hour  was  over,  what  was 
wanted.  And  he  showed  them  how  the  en- 
terprise could  be  divided  into  three  depart- 
ments. He  told  off  half  his  force  for  the 
dam,  and  perhaps  a  quarter  to  the  trench, 
with  another  quarter  for  the  distribution. 
He  left  the  smaller  sections  to  arrange  their 


112  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

own  work,  knowing  very  well  that  it  would 
regulate  itself,  after  a  little  experiment,  with 
a  good  leader  in  each  enterprise.  And  so  it 
proved. 

The  brook  which  was  to  furnish  water  was 
a  tearing  trout-brook,  which  made  plunges 
without  number  in  its  determination  to  come 
down  to  the  level  of  the  Hudson  River. 
Eveleth  showed  to  his  party  that  the  first  ob- 
ject was  to  make  a  pond,  which  was  what  the 
engineers  would  call  a  reservoir,  to  save 
water  enough  to  keep  Mah-mah's  potatoes 
through  the  longest  of  droughts ;  say  for  at 
least  two  months.  This  reservoir  must  be 
as  near  the  field  as  possible,  so  that  the  irri- 
gating trench  might  be  as  short  as  possible. 
But  it  must  be  where  the  banks  would  slope 
at  a  good  grade,  so  that  it  would  be  easy  to 
arrange  a  gate  or  sluice,  with  but  little  pres- 
sure. Other  things  being  equal,  a  large  and 
shallow  reservoir  would  be  better  than  a  small 
and  deep  one.  It  must  be  on  Mah-mah's 
land,  also. 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  1 13 

They  did  not  find  exactly  what  they  wanted. 
They  made  some  measurements  in  different 
places,  and  trudged  up  and  down  for  an  hour 
or  two,  before  Eveleth  was  satisfied.  At  last 
he  chose  a  hollow,  where  at  one  time  cattle, 
or  perhaps  deer,  had  come  to  water,  and  where 
there  had  probably  been  a  crossing-place  for 
wagons  before  the  highway  was  built,  a  mile 
or  two  below. 

"Here  shall  be  the  reservoir,"  said  Eve- 
leth. And  here  he  set  his  working  party  at 
the  business  of  loosening  rocks,  rolling  logs, 
trimming  them  from  their  branches,  and  other 
bits  of  preparation  for  the  dam,  which  they 
were  to  build  together.  But,  before  he  could 
work  with  them  he  had  to  lay  out  the  line  of 
the  trench.  The  reservoir  was  fully  half  a 
mile  from  the  field  to  be  watered.  The  brook 
swept  far  away  from  the  field,  and  only  came 
back  to  it  at  the  point,  quite  below  it  in  level, 
where  they  had  filled  the  barrels.  Eveleth 
had  to  make  as  short  a  track  as  he  could, 
keeping  out  of  the  way  of  rocks,  trees,  and 
8 


I  14  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

ridges  of  the  mountain,  where  the  water 
might  flow.  The  boys  thought  this  would 
be  the  hardest  part  of  their  work.  But  they 
had  faith  in  their  leader,  and  he  soon  showed 
them  that  it  would  be  the  easiest. 

His  surveying  instrument  was  of  the  sim- 
plest. He  nailed  a  strip  of  board,  two  feet 
long,  across  the  top  of  a  stout  staff,  so  that 
it  made  a  tall  T.  To  the  cross-bar  he  lashed 
a  bit  of  cane-pole,  which  was  a  part  of  a  dis- 
carded trout-rod,  which  the  boys  had  among 
their  possessions.  Then  to  the  middle  of  the 
cross  he  tied  a  bit  of  twine,  at  the  lower  end 
of  which  swung  a  large  pebble,  weighing  per- 
haps half  a  pound.  He  bade  Fred  carry  this 
"theodolite,"  and  when  he  wanted  to  take  a 
level  Fred  held  it  erect  for  him,  taking  care 
that  the  string  with  the  bob  should  be,  as 
nearly  as  possible,  parallel  with  the  staff. 

"  It  is  not  as  grand  as  a  spirit-level,"  said 
he,  "but  while  a  stone  falls  straight  to  the 
ground  it  will  answer." 

The  surveying   party  followed  with  him, 


FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


with  such  tools  as  they  had,  and  heard  his 
instructions  as  to  the  nature  of  the  ground. 

"  You  see,"  said  Eveleth,  "  we  do  not  have 
to  buy  the  right  of  way.  We  just  take  it. 
If  the  canal  is  ten  feet  wide,  no  matter  ;  or  if 
the  water  all  runs  in  a  chink  like  that,  no 
matter.  All  we  want  is  that  it  shall  run.  It 
will  not  run  too  fast.  Our  gate,  up  above, 
will  stop  that.  It  must  not  run  so  slow  as  to 
stop.  That  is  all  we  need  care  for.  And 
you  need  not  bother  about  much  digging.  I 
shall  make  it  go  over  the  top  of  the  ground, 
and  we  shall  save  time  and  muscle  so." 

There  were  one  or  two  places  where  he 
proposed,  and  they  made,  quite  bold  cuts. 
But,  in  general,  their  work  was  to  make 
strong  dams  which  would  head  off  the  water 
when  it  wanted  to  go  the  wrong  way.  Al- 
most all  the  boys  had  done  similar  work  with 
ice  and  snow  in  the  spring,  when  they  had 
their  mill-wheels  to  turn,  so  that,  as  soon  as 
they  caught  his  idea,  they  addressed  them- 


Il6  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

selves  to  the  work,  making  their  own  plans 
as  to  detail. 

In  an  hour  of  this  levelling  and  planning, 
the  line  was  staked  out,  two  or  three  of  the 
more  difficult  points  being  left  to  after  advise- 
ment. 

At  the  field  itself  there  was  an  enterprise 
of  more  delicacy.  Eveleth  entrusted  this  to 
Blondin,  who  had  often  done  such  work  in 
Montana,  and  who,  indeed,  could  have  "taken 
the  whole  contract,"  as  Eveleth  knew,  better 
than  he  would  himself.  But  Blondin  was  far 
too  modest  to  assume  the  direction  of  affairs, 
and  said,  what  was  true,  that  he  did  not  know 
the  boys  well  enough  to  set  them  to  work. 
Eveleth  had,  also,  the  great  advantage  of  the 
success  with  the  bridge  the  year  before,  and, 
as  he  said  himself,  he  knew  the  resources  of 
the  country. 

So  to  Blondin  fell  the  job  of  arranging  on 
the  upper  slope,  where  Mah-mah's  potato- 
patch  emerged  from  ferns  and  raspberry 
bushes,  a  guard,  as  he  called  it,  of  logs  and 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  1 1/ 

slabs,  which  was  to  be  so  arranged  with 
boards  fixed  for  water-gates  that  neither  too 
much  water  nor  too  little  should  flow  between 
the  rills,  and,  indeed,  that  the  whole  water- 
supply  might  be  absolutely  at  Mah-mah's  di- 
rection. Guthrie,  Harrison,  and  Hanger  at- 
tached themselves  to  Blondin's  party  with 
great  delight.  He  would  have  been  glad, 
also,  had  they  a  spirit-level  to  use.  But  in 
place  of  it  he  taught  the  boys  how  to  bring 
gourds  of  water,  and,  by  rightly  spilling  it,  to 
make  sure  which  way  the  surface  ran. 

And  Eveleth  returned  to  his  work. 

If  this  story  ever  sends  a  reader  to  explore 
the  right  valley  in  the  Kaatskills  he  will  find 
the  reservoir,  the  trench — which  Eveleth  al- 
ways called  the  canal — and  the  guard  in  full 
operation.  And  the  reader  must  be  left  to 
make  that  journey.  For  we  cannot  stop  to 
give,  in  detail,  the  history  of  the  happy  days, 
four  in  all,  which  passed  before  the  assembly 
of  the  club  was  summoned  up,  one  Saturday 
afternoon,  to  see  the  water  let  on  to  flow 


II 8  FOUR   AND  FIVE. 

through  the  works  as  they  were  complete;!. 
If  the  mothers  of  the  Reservoir  party  had 
dreamed,  in  their  boldest  imaginings,  of  the 
way  their  boys  took  off  their  trousers,  pinned 
up  their  shirts,  and  proceeded  directly  into 
the  bed  of  the  stream,  when  it  became  neces- 
sary, at  last,  to  adjust  the  bed-rocks,  and 
make  firm  the  heavy  log  which  was  the  foun- 
dation of  the  dam,  those  mothers  would  have 
grown  gray  with  terror.  But,  fortunately,  no 
boy  had  time  or  ink  to  write  home  to  his 
mother  any  nice  detail  about  his  working  cos- 
tume, and  so  the  dam  was  finished,  and  fin- 
ished well,  and  no  boy  caught  cold,  and  no 
mother  turned  gray. 

It  was  on  the  morning  of  the  last  day  that 
the  discovery  took  place  which  crowned  the 
whole  work  with  "a  sort  of  dramatic  conclu- 
sion. Eveleth  saw,  with  satisfaction,  that 
his  water  was  rising  slowly,  as  it  should  do. 
He  had  arranged,  with  good  workmanship,  a 
sluice-gate,  where  Mah-mah  could  slide  in,  or 
take  out,  one  or  another  bit  of  slab,  as  she 


FOUR  AND  FIVE, 


wanted  more  water  or  less,  or  as  she  needed 
to  take  it  from  a  higher  or  lower  level.  Now 
came  the  heaviest  "  cut,"  as  he  called  it,  in 
the  job.  He  had  not  chosen  to  throw  it  on 
the  "  canal  party,"  but  preferred  to  take  it  as 
a  share  of  his  own  larger  division.  And,  as 
always,  he  chose  to  take  the  lion's  share  of 
the  work.  He  had  collected  every  spade, 
shovel,  and  crow  which  the  neighborhood 
could  afford.  He  took  the  first  pick  himself, 
and  plied  it  vigorously.  Thus  he  loosened 
some  of  the  bowlders,  which  were  all  inter- 
laced with  roots,  and  then,  with  two  crows, 
and  stout  boys  working  them,  he  lifted  the 
heaviest  stone  from  its  bed. 

As  it  rolled  away  it  opened  the  roots  of  a 
large  birch  tree  to  view,  and  there,  all  covered 
with  rotten  leaves  and  dirt,  was  a  roll  of  black 
leather.  Eveleth  dragged  it  out  with  his 
crow.  The  rotten  leather  parted,  and  there 
rolled  out  thirty  or  more  pieces  of  gold  coin 
into  the  hollow  left  by  the  stone  which  had 
been  rolled  away. 


I2O  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

"  Kidd's  treasure ! "  cried  Eveleth.  "  What 
luck!  Pick  them  up,  Friday,  save  the 
pieces  of  the  bag,  and  let  us  see  what  more 
there  is." 

But  there  was  nothing  more.  The  boys 
all  crowded  round.  They  searched  right  and 
left.  They  cut  the  roots  of  the  birch  all  to 
pieces.  But  there  was  nothing  more. 

The  coins  were  old,  but  were  bright.  Fri- 
day, as  a  Spanish  boy,  was  set  to  work  to 
read  the  inscriptions.  But  Friday  said  they 
were  not  doubloons,  nor  were  they  of  any 
coinage  he  had  ever  seen.  They  afterwards 
proved  to  be  Portuguese  moidores,  all  of  the 
same  age.  They  were,  indeed,  two  hundred 
years  older  than  any  of  the  boys  were,  and 
had  been  waiting  for  them,  in  their  hiding- 
place,  for  more  than  two  centuries.  It  was 
not  difficult  to  patch  together  the  bits  of  rot- 
ten leather,  and  it  was  then  easy  to  see  that 
this  was  the  money-belt  of  some  old-time  ad- 
venturer. 

"  Hunting  for  gold,  most  likely,"  said  Eve- 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  121 

leth,  "  and  he  left  here  much  more  than  he 
found." 

The  excitement  of  the  discovery,  and  the 
search  for  more  gold,  took  an  hour  or  two  out 
from  the  time  for  the  cutting  of  the  final 
trench.  But  Eveleth  never  lost  his  head  dur- 
ing the  whole  proceeding.  He  said,  and  the 
others  loyally  agreed,  that  it  was  treasure 
trove  on  what  was,  by  good  fortune,  Mah- 
mah's  land.  Her  deed,  as  the  boys  knew,  in- 
cluded a  bit  of  woodland  bounded  by  the 
brook.  And  Eveleth  had  taken  care  that  his 
most  important  "  improvement "  should  be 
upon  her  land,  so  that  no  land-shark  might 
ever  interfere  with  it. 

"  It  is  treasure  trove  of  Mah-mah's "  he 
said,  "  and  it  will  be  a  good  nest-egg  for  her. 
These  pieces  are  bigger  than  half-eagles,  and 
they  are  thicker,  I  believe.  Thirty-two  of 
them,  did  you  say,  Friday  ?  That  ought  to 
make  nearly  two  hundred  dollars  for  the  old 
saint." 

And  then  there  was  great  consultation  as 


122  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

to  how  the  announcement  should  be  made  to 
Mah-mah.  The  boys  agreed,  with  the  passion 
for  secrecy  and  a  surprise,  that  they  would 
not  even  tell  the  canal  party. 

And  now  light  hearts,  and  willing  hands, 
and  good  sense,  and  stout  tools  made  short 
work  of  what  was  left  of  the  trench.  And 
Eveleth  sent  down  for  Fred,  who  was,  by 
this  time,  commanding  the  canal  party,  and 
they  revised  for  the  last  time  their  calcula- 
tions and  decisions  as  to  the  possible  and 
probable  flow  of  water.  Once  more  Eveleth 
sounded  the  reservoir,  to  be  sure  that  the 
water  rose  as  fast  as  it  should,  and  he  was 
well  satisfied.  Then  they  shouldered  their 
tools,  which  had  always  been  stacked  at  night 
before,  and  marched  down  together  to  old 
Mah-mah' s  cabin. 

They  found  her,  as  they  had  expected, 
quite  equal  to  the  occasion.  She  had  enlisted 
a  fourth  working  party  from  the  boys  left  at 
the  camp,  and  they  had  made  two  long  tables 
on  what  Norman  grandly  called  the  lawn  in 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  123 

front,  where  they  looked  out  beyond  the  Wes- 
tern hills  to  see  the  sun  as  it  began  to  go 
down.  These  tables  were  made  of  the  boards 
from  the  fence,  nailed  for  the  occasion  upon 
turtles.  They  had  been  well  washed  by 
Mah-mah  and  her  crew,  and  were  now  cov- 
ered by  sheets  of  Frank  Leslie,  Harper's 
Weekly,  and  the  Youth's  Companion.  Before 
the  working  party  reached  the  house  the  glad 
tin-tara-tin-tara  of  a  horn  was  heard,  as  Nor- 
man summoned  all  skirmishers  and  out-lyers 
in  to  the  feast. 

And  Mah-mah  and  her  henchmen  were 
carrying  bowls  of  smoking  succotash,  hominy, 
and  what  the  boys  called  fermity,  in  memory 
of  Jack  the  Giant  Killer,  and  dishes  without 
a  name.  The  industrious  camp  party  had 
brought  up  trout  by  the  hundred,  which  some- 
body had  fried.  Mah-mah  had  been  baking 
pies  since  Tuesday,  in  preparation  for  the 
feast.  And  it  was  clear  that  if  any  one  were 
hungry  when  he  began,  he  would  not  be  hun- 
gry long. 


124  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


CHAPTER  X. 

OUCH  a  dinner  party  was  it  as  the  Prm- 
cess's  farm  never  saw  before,  and  as  the 
Clove  never  saw,  nor  any  of  the  country 
round  about.  The  boys  said  that  there 
should  be  an  extra  plate  ready,  lest  Rip  Van 
Winkle  might  wake  from  his  sleep  at  the 
singing  and  laughing,  and  come  down  to  join 
in  the  revelry.  All  of  the  nineteen  were 
present,  so  that  the  club  saw  itself  for  the 
first  time.  The  original  Four  were  here,  the 
Five  who  first  joined  the  original  Four  and 
gave  the  club  its  name,  and  all  the  Nine  Ten- 
derfeet  of  this  year.  With  Blondin  Coram, 
who  had  been  chosen  in  since  the  summer 
began,  here  were  nineteen  members,  and,  as 
Eveleth  explained  in  his  speech,  the  addition 
of  Inez  brought  their  number  up  to  a  round 
twenty.  Amid  loud  hand-clapping  and  other 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  125 

tokens  of  approval,  he  explained  that,  if  each 
of  their  members  used  his  privilege  of  invit- 
ing one  other  to  the  club  before  the  end  of 
the  year,  the  club  would  be  forty  members 
strong  when  it  was  three  years  old.  "  And 
this,  I  suppose,  is  the  exact  principle  which 
gives  our  order  the  name  of  Ten  Times  One 
is  Ten." 

"And  now,  gentlemen  and  lady,"  he  con- 
tinued, "  I  have  a  very  important  subject  to 
bring  forward.  It  relates  to  our  friend  and 
hostess,  the  Princess  here,  who  does  me  the 
honor  to  sit  at  my  right  hand  to-day,  and  to 
ask  me  to  preside  at  this  elegant  and  sumpt- 
uous board.  I  am  commissioned  by  the  club." 

Here  all  the  boys  wondered  what  was  to 
come,  but,  with  general  confidence  inEveleth, 
all  knew  it  would  be  something  amusing, 
though  no  one  knew  just  what  it  might  be. 

"  I  am  commissioned  by  the  club,  for  I  am 
sure  I  speak  the  wishes  of  all,  to  thank  Mah- 
mah  for  her  unvarying  kindness  to  each  and 
all  of  us — three  times  three  cheers  for  Mah- 


126  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

rnah,"  who  rose  and  courtesied,  really  with  a 
good  deal  of  dignity  and  grace — "  and  to  ex- 
press the  hope  that  her  stock  has  not  been 
too  much  watered  to-day.  After  these  cere- 
monies are  over,  when  my  younger  friends 
have  eaten  the  last  doughnut  from  her  unri- 
valled frying-pans,  I  shall  have  the  pleasure 
of  asking  her  to  let  in  the  fertilizing  waves 
which  are,  even  now,  accumulating  in  the 
store-house  which  you  have  provided  for  her 
convenience. 

"  I  have  now  the  pleasure  of  presenting  to 
her,  in  your  name,  a  little  store  which  has 
been  waiting  for  her  for  two  or  three  centu- 
ries, by  the  side  of  that  reservoir,  under  the 
roots  of  a  white  birch  tree.  The  casket  is 
not  the  most  elegant." 

Here  Eveleth  produced  what  was  evidently 
a  New  York  Ledger,  tightly  folded.  He 
opened  it  with  great  ceremony,  and,  holding 
the  sheet  with  both  hands,  was  able  to  show 
the  pile  of  gold  coins  to  the  company,  most 
of  whom  now  knew  of  them  for  the  first  time. 


FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


To  the  Princess  Mah-mah  all  this  was  a  com- 
plete surprise. 

"  I  suppose  this  property  to  have  been  left 
by  the  Master  of  Ballantrae,  if  you  have  ever 
read  his  fascinating  adventures.  I  know  that 
it  belongs  to  our  hostess,  on  whose  domain 
we  have  had  the  good  fortune  to  find  it.  The 
club  begs  her  to  use  it  for  such  purposes  as 
will  make  her  winter  cheerful  and  her  sum- 
mer glad." 

The  dear  old  saint  looked  at  the  gold  with 
unaffected  curiosity,  and  handled  the  pieces 
with  a  childish  interest.  Then,  after  another 
three-times-three  in  her  honor,  she  made  a 
very  pleasant  response,  with  her  thanks  to 
the  boys  for  their  enterprise.  She  did  not 
commit  herself  to  any  serious  expectation  of 
good  from  the  canal,  in  which  she  had,  at 
heart,  not  the  slightest  confidence.  But  the 
earlier  achievements  with  the  water-barrel 
had  certainly  succeeded,  and  she  was  able  to 
point  to  the  potato-vines,  which  were  full  in 
sight,  as  visible  witnesses  to  the  boys'  skill 


128  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

and  industry.  For  all  this  she  thanked  them 
in  a  very  cordial  address. 

"  'N'  as  for  these  yeller-boys — dat's  wot 
dey  called  'em  w'en  I  wos  a  gal — as  for  them, 
my  dear  boys,  I  can  use  'em,  as  he  says,  soze 
to  be  a  use  to  you  all.  Wot  is  it  the  song 
says — et  will  be  all  right  ef  we  '  Look  out 
and  not  in  ? '  " 

She  seemed  a  little  doubtful  where  she 
would  bestow  her  treasure.  The  Hanger 
presented  his  mug,  from  which  he  had  rinsed 
the  last  stain  of  coffee,  and,  for  the  moment, 
the  coins  rested  there.  But,  in  a  minute, 
Blondin  sent  up  from  his  end  of  the  table  a 
tobacco-pouch,  made  of  an  otter's  tail,  which 
he  generally  carried  by  a  thong  round  his 
neck.  "That's  for  the  shiners,  Mah-mah," 
said  he.  And  the  old  woman,  well  pleased 
with  the  attention — for  she  had  held  Blondin 
in  her  arms  when  his  first  blanket  was  wrap- 
ped about  him — trusted  the  treasure  to  this 
well-blessed  receptacle. 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  129 

"  When  hunger  now  and  thirst  were  fully  satisfied." 

AT  a  joint  signal  from  Harrison  and  Eve* 
leth,  the  company  rose.  They  joined  hands 
around  the  table  and  sang  T.  T.  T.,  which  was 
the  sacred  song  on  all  occasions  of  high  cer- 
emony. Then,  at  Eveleth's  direction,  eight 
boys,  with  spades  and  shovels  on  their  shoul- 
ders, marched  as  an  escort  of  honor,  two 
and  two.  Mr.  Geddes  followed  with  the  Prin- 
cess on  his  arm,  and  the  rest  in  a  train,  not 
very  carefully  marshalled,  behind,  all  singing 
"We're  Marching  through  Georgia,"  as  the 
best  "processional"  which  they  could  organ- 
ize for  the  ceremony.  In  this  order  they  fol- 
lowed the  course  of  the  proposed  canal  to  the 
little  reservoir  where  Eveleth  and  his  party 
had  been  working. 

He  had  hoped  to  find  it  quite  full  by  the 
accumulation  of  water  since  they  left  it.  The 
water  had  not  risen  as  high  as  he  meant  it 
should,  as  he  explained  hastily  to  his  chief  of 
staff ;  "  but  it  is  high  enough,"  he  said. 

And  then,  arranging  all  the  boys  that  they 
9 


130                       FOUR  AND  FIVE. 
I 

could  see,  he  led  the  Princess  Mah-mah,  with 
great  ceremony,  to  the  sluice-way,  and  gave 
her  the  instructions  which  she  was  hereafter 
to  follow.  The  lever  answered  her  hand  just 
as  it  should  do.  The  sluice  rose  easily,  and 
a  smooth  sheet  of  water  poured  into  the  new 
canal — fast,  regular,  and  sure,  ploughed  up 
the  dirt  at  the  bottom,  and  ran  merrily  along 
its  newly-appointed  way.  So  successful  and 
so  pretty  was  the  beginning  that  the  boys 
cheered  it,  as  they  would  have  cheered  a  suc- 
cessful catch  on  the  ball-ground.  And  then, 
for  twenty  minutes,  more  or  less,  came  the 
interest  and  excitement  of  following  the  flow 
of  water  along.  It  would  stop  sometimes  till 
it  had  filled  up  hollows,  and  twice  the  parties 
detailed  for  that  purpose  had  to  check  it 
where  it  wanted  to  flow  over  into  places  where 
it  was  not  meant  to  go.  But,  on  the  whole, 
the  experiment  showed  the  care  and  skill  to- 
gether of  the  young  engineers.  And  in  less 
than  an  hour  from  the  time  they  had  left  the 
table,  Eveleth  and  the  rest  had  the  pleasure 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  13 1 

of  seeing  the  long  trough  above  the  potato- 
patch  well  filled,  so  that  he  could  safely  send 
a  messenger  up  to  the  sluice-way  to  shut  off 
the  flow,  that  they  need  not  have  more  than 
they  wanted. 

For  the  first  time  dear  old  Mah-mah  had  a 
full  appreciation  of  what  the  work  of  irriga- 
tion was  to  be,  and  the  eagerness  with  which 
she  thanked  the  boys  for  all  that  they  had 
done  betrayed  a  certain  suspicion,  existing  up 
to  this  moment,  that  their  good  intentions 
would  not  "  pan  out "  as  well  as  they  had 
hoped.  She  had  all  the  enthusiasm  of  a  new 
convert,  and,  without  meaning  to,  showed  that 
she  was  surprised. 

The  day  had  been  thoroughly  successful ; 
the  little  incident  of  the  discovery  of  the  gold 
had  given  an  element  of  romance  to  it,  and 
the  thorough  success  of  the  water-flow  had 
brought  about  even  a  dramatic  conclusion. 
The  boys  did  not  know  that  they  were  tired  ; 
they  had  all  been  interested,  and,  had  neces- 
sity required  more  of  them,  would  have  done 


I32  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

more.  As  it  was,  they  gathered  the  tools  to- 
gether, packed  them  up  on  Blondin's  horse 
and  upon  another  beast  of  burden  which  had 
been  borrowed  for  the  occasion,  and,  bidding 
the  Princess  each  a  separate  good-bye  with 
much  shaking  of  hands,  having  "cleared  up" 
the  relics  of  the  feast  as  well  as  they  could, 
and  pretended  to  put  things  in  decent  order, 
they  left  her  to  her  loneliness,  and  marched 
over  the  divide  to  their  own  camp. 

Eveleth,  Harrison,  Geddes,  and  Friday 
brought  up  the  rear,  and  fell  into  rather  se- 
rious talk  as  to  what  the  occasion  had  devel- 
oped. Friday  said  that  he  had  never  made 
the  computation  which  Eveleth  had  made  so 
cleverly,  which  showed  how  four  multiplied 
itself  into  forty,  if  only  they  chose,  in  four 
years  of  an  organization  like  theirs.  All  the 
boys  had  read  the  book  called  "Ten  Times 
One  is  Ten,"  which  is  based  on  the  idea  of 
the  multiplication  of  the  interest  in  faith  and 
hope  and  love.  It  supposes  that  each  ardent 
believer  in  the  four  mottoes  will  enlist  ten 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  133 

other  people  as  ardent  as  himself,  as  three 
years  go  by.  And  what  Friday  said  was  that 
he  had  never  believed  this,  in  practice,  before. 

"The  weak  spot  in  the  theory,"  said  Eve 
leth,  "is  here.  I  did  not  think  it  necessary 
to  explain  it  in  my  speech,  but  I  knew  it  just 
as  well.  I  doubt  whether  we  have  made  any 
converts  to  the  four  mottoes.  We  have  sim- 
ply picked  up  some  good  fellows  who  believed 
in  them  already.  Eustace  there,  the  fellow  I 
brought  over  with  me,  was  just  as  upright 
and  disinterested  and  cheerful  a  fellow  as 
there  is.  He  did  not  need  any  quickening. 
On  my  part,  I  liked  him,  and  he  liked  me ; 
he  did  not  know  where  he  should  spend  his 
vacation.  I  told  him  what  a  good  time  we 
had  here,  and  he  came.  But  I  should  be  a 
fool  if  I  said  or  believed  that  anything  I  had 
done  had  made  him  more  faithful,  more  hope- 
ful, or  more  loving  than  he  was  before." 

Young  Geddes,  perhaps,  was  quite  con- 
scious that  he  should  not  have  been  there 
had  not  somebody  stimulated  him  to  looking 


134  '  FOUR   AND  FIVE. 

out  rather  than  in,  as  has  been  explained  in 
another  part  of  this  story.  But  he  knew  too 
much  to  look  backward ;  he  wanted  to  look 
forward,  and  he  rather  followed  Eveleth's 
lead,  therefore,  by  saying, — 

"  Why  should  we  not  bear  that  in  mind  ? 
Why  should  we  not,  in  bringing  fellows  here 
another  summer,  try  to  look  out  for  those 
who  had  better  not  spend  their  summers 
alone,  and  for  whom  it  will  be  a  good  thing 
to  be  with  thirty  or  forty  other  fellows  who 
are  awake  and  alive  ? " 

"  I  am  not  so  sure  of  that,"  said  Friday. 
"  I  think,  as  soon  as  we  set  out  to  do  other 
fellows  good,  we  may  be  getting  a  little  into 
the  Pharisee's  box.  If  it  does  them  any 
good  to  come  here  with  us,  let  it ;  but  I  am 
not  going  to  be  bringing  any  fellow  here  on 
the  pretence  that  I  am  any  holier  than  he  is." 
And  at  this  they  all  laughed,  Friday  having 
expressed,  as  he  was  rather  apt  to  express, 
an  underlying  feeling. 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  135 

After  a  dozen  paces  without  a  word  Eve- 
leth  said, — 

"  That  is  all  right,  Friday,  and  I  agree 
with  you  through  and  through.  But  what  I 
mean,  and  what  I  think  the  professor  means, 
is  this :  that  it  is  a  great  deal  better  for  a 
lot  of  us  to  be  together  than  it  is  to  be  going 
about  alpne.  I  am  willing  to  say  that  I  have 
had  no  end  of  nonsense  knocked  out  of  me 
by  being  at  school ;  and  I  know  fellows  who 
grew  up  well;  with  private  tutors  and  in  very 
grand  homes,  ordering  their  own  grooms  and 
giving  directions  generally,  as  if  they  were 
the  Prince  Plumcake,  who  come  to  grief  be- 
cause they  do  not  have  the  nonsense  taken 
out  of  them.  Now,  if  a  lot  of  us  come  to- 
gether here,  and  live  in  a  civilized  way,  as 
we  are  living,  which  is,  to  my  judgment,  far 
more  civilized  than  the  way  men  live  in  col- 
leges which  I  know  of ;  I  think  if  it  does 
them  any  good  we  won't  growl  about  it ;  we 
will  take  that  as  it  may  come  by  the  way." 

The  conversation  did  none  of  the  four  any 


136  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

harm.  It  is  sometimes  a  good  thing  to  put  in- 
to form  an  underlying  notion,  which  becomes 
more  definite  because  it  is  stated  in  words. 
It  was,  in  fact,  this  conversation  which  led  to 
a  good  deal  of  talk  among  the  boys  before 
they  broke  up  for  the  winter,  as  to  whether, 
in  the  winter,  the  club  might  not  continue 
its  existence  to  some  purpose ;  at  least,  in 
two  or  three  of  the  centres  where  most  of 
the  boys  were  studying.  And  on  the  fourth 
of  September,  when  three  or  four  of  the  num- 
ber were  to  leave  on  the  next  morning,  they 
had  what  they  called  a  final  powwow  for  a 
good-bye.  Tom  Smith  and  Oscar,  two  of 
"  this  year's  boys,"  had  brought  in  two  coons 
from  the  woods,  and  old  Mah-mah  had  come 
over  to  give  them  instructions  about  the 
proper  roasting — or  rather  baking — of  these 
delectable  animals.  Blondin  had  contributed 
two  young  turkeys,  and  old  Coram  a  little 
pig  for  the  feast,  and  therefore  the  year  broke 
up  with  another  high  festival.  It  was  then 
and  there  that  Eveleth  announced,  to  the 


FOUR  AND  FIVE,  137 

great  interest  of  the  others,  that  he  had 
found  that  nine  of  their  number  would  be  to- 
gether at  the  Polytechnic  in  the  next  winter. 
The  boy  did  not  say,  what  was  true,  that  it 
was  his  own  success  in  the  bridge-building 
of  the  year  before,  which  had  been  reported 
to  the  fathers  of  three  of  these  boys,  which 
had  turned  their  attention  to  the  institution 
where  Eveleth  had  been  trained  to  such  pur- 
pose ;  perhaps  he  did  not  know  this.  All 
that  he  said  was  that  nine  of  them  had  bound 
themselves  to  live  together  that  winter,  in  a 
co-operative  club,  "and  if  we  cannot  take 
old  Mah-mah  over  to  keep  house  for  us,"  he 
said,  "  we  will  make  her  give  us  a  letter  of 
introduction  to  somebody  of  her  color  who 
will.  We  are  going  to  see  if  we  cannot  make 
a  decent  Christian  family  of  our  own.  As 
the  winter  goes  by  we  shall  look  up  one  fel- 
low and  another  whom  you  will  like  to  meet 
here  next  year,  and  we  will  come  prepared  to 
tell  you  how  the  great  principles  of  the  Four 
Mottoes  work  in  a  university  town.  I  tell 


138  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

you,  we  shall  have  our  badges  and  our  grips 
and  our  pass-words  and  everything  to  make 
us  comfortable  before  we  see  you  again." 

At  this  again,  as  happened  so  often,  there 
was  hand-clapping  and  applause  ;  and  then 
it  was  that  was  revealed  the  secret  of  two  or 
three  mysterious  visits  which  Blondin  had 
made  to  Newburgh,  and  which  had  never 
been  accounted  for.  Old  Mah-mah  rose  with 
great  solemnity ;  she  produced  a  much-worn 
carpet  grip-sack,  which  the  boys  had  never 
seen  before,  and  made  a  little  address.  She 
said  that  they  might  remember  that  she  had 
told  them  she  would  make  use  of  the  yellow- 
boys  that  they  had  given  her.  And  now  she 
had  them  ready,  that  each  might  take  one 
and  wear  it  when  he  wanted  to  as  the  medal 
of  the  club.  Then  from  the  bag  she  took 
out  one  of  the  moidores,  in  which  some  New- 
burgh  jeweller  had  bored  a  hole  and  inserted 
a  gold  ring,  and  in  the  ring  was  a  broad  rib- 
bon of  blue  and  white,  such  as  Blondin  and 
Mah-mah  had  seen  worn  by  veterans  of  the 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  139 

war.  With  a  good  deal  of  grace  the  old  saint 
turned  to  Eveleth  and  pinned  the  badge  upon 
his  breast,  and  said,  "  This  is  the  medal  of 
the  club."  Amid  great  applause  from  them 
all  she  turned  to  Harrison,  who  was  on  her 
right,  and  did  the  same.  And  as  soon  as  the 
boys  caught  the  notion  each  one  ran  up  to 
her,  and  insisted  that  she  should  attach  to 
his  breast  his  own  decoration.  Then  she 
gave  to  Blondin  one,  and  said,  "  This  is  to  go 
to  the  Spanish  boy  you  told  us  about ; "  and 
to  Eveleth  she  said,  "There's  some  left  here, 
and  those  are  for  the  ones  who  come  another 
year."  The  boys  split  the  air  with  their 
cheering  as  Mah-mah  gave  to  them  this  ele- 
gant badge,  and  Eveleth,  quickly  catching 
her  notion,  attached  one  of  the  badges  to 
her  own  dress.  So  the  club  had  not  only 
its  name  but  its  decoration. 


I4O  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


CHAPTER  XL 

O  O  it  happened  that  on  the  6th  of  Septem- 
ber Eveleth's  mother  came  over  to  exam- 
ine his  last  arrangements  for  the  T.  T.  T. 
club-house.  She  could  not  be  quite  sure 
about  the  sheets,  and  the  drawers  and  the 
rest,  until  she  had  seen  them  with  her  own 
eyes. 

The  boys  took  her  all  over  an  old-fashioned 
house,  a  little  off  the  rush  of  modern  fashion, 
which  they  had  hired  at  quite  a  low  rate,  be- 
cause it  was  too  big  for  most  families,  and 
the  owner  did  not  want  to  put  in  many  mod- 
ern improvements.  "  There  are  modern  im- 
provements enough  for  us,"  said  Eveleth ; 
"  and  where  we  want  them  we  can  put  them 
in  ourselves." 

He  had  narrow,  iron  bedsteads — two  or 
three  in  a  room,  a". wording  to  its  size.  "We 


FOUR  AND  FIVE  14! 

are  going  to  sleep  as  the  cadets  do,"  he  said. 
This  gave  him  room  in  the  house  for  fifteen 
regular  inmates.  The  kitchen  was  the  old 
kitchen,  as  they  had  found  it,  with  a  new 
range.  Some  recent  resident  had  run  a  large 
dining-room  out  into  what  had  been  the  back 
garden.  For  this  Eveleth  had  provided  a 
service  of  crockery,  of  cheapness  inconceiva- 
ble to  his  mother ;  and  after  she  had  surveyed 
all  this,  generally  with  approval,  but  some- 
times with  the  suggestions  for  economy  of  an 
old  housekeeper,  Eveleth  brought  her  to  the 
large  parlor,  which  he  had  reserved  till  now. 

"  Every  fellow  may  study  as  much  as  he 
chooses  in  his  own  room,"  said  Eveleth, 
proudly,  "  but  here  he  is  to  study,  or  read,  or 
sing,  or  do  nothing.  He  is  to  have  just  as 
good  a  time  as  he  can  anywhere — except  at 
home,"  and  the  big  boy  kissed  his  mother 
affectionately. 

There  was  a  pretty,  low  book  case,  which 
he  had  picked  up  at  an  auction  ;  there  was  a 
piano  which  belonged  to  Harrison's  sister, 


142  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

who  had  gone  to  Europe  ;  there  were  two  or 
three  large,  comfortable  chairs ;  there  was  a 
sofa,  and  a  nice  writing-desk.  The  furniture 
had  not  been  made  in  one  shop,  and  was 
not  absolutly  "  aesthetic  "  in  design.  But  it 
certainly  had  an  air  of  thorough  comfort. 
Some  well  chosen  bits  of  carpet  had  been  cut 
and  fringed,  so  as  to  make  what  Miss  Brooks 
calls  "  an  archipelago  of  rugs,"  and  Mrs.  Eve- 
leth  was  able,  with  good  faith,  to  praise  her 
son  for  the  skill  with  which  he  had  arranged 
his  scanty  materials. 

"  Friday  deserves  the  real  credit,"  said  he. 
"  His  eye  is  so  good,  and  there  is  so  much 
bottom  good  sense  to  him.  I  hope  he  will 
come  in  time  for  you  to  see  him." 

"  Now  this,  you  see,  is  our  room,  and  no 
one  is  to  terrify  us  or  make  us  afraid  here." 
Then  he  pushed  open  the  folding-doors  and 
led  her  into  the  back  parlor,  as,  in  old  times, 
it  had  been  called.  "  And  this  is  the  public's 
room,"  he  said.  "Friday  wanted  to  call  it 
the  loafers'  room,  but  I  did  not  like  that. 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  143 

But  the  rule  of  this  room  is  to  be — well,  that 
the  neighbors  who  like,  may  look  in  if  they 
like.  See,  I  have  got  the  other  boys  to  bring 
the  books  we  had  when  we  were  boys.  Here 
is  Boys'  Own  Book,  and  Swiss  Family,  and 
the  Mayne  Reids.  Should  you  have  thought 
we  could  get  such  a  lot  ?  There  are  a  hun- 
dred and  thirty-four  in  all — some  duplicates, 
but  that  is  no  matter.  I  mean  to  let  any  de- 
cent boy  in  the  neighborhood  come  in  and 
read,  as  long  as  he  does  not  make  a  row. 
Then  the  fellows  will  leave  their  newspapers 
here.  I  mean  to  have  the  picture-papers  here 
when  I  can  get  them.  We  have  dominoes 
and  checkers  and  chess — you  don't  know  how 
well  Friday's  class  play  checkers.  There  is 
a  little  German  fellow,  named  Mathey,  who 
beats  Friday  three  games  out  of  four. 

"  I  do  not  think  the  boys  had  better  come 
into  the  parlor  at  all.  I  think  the  men  have 
a  right  to  their  ease  there.  But  two  fellows 
volunteer  to  sit  here  Monday,  and  two  more 
Tuesday,  and  two  more  Wednesday,  and  so 


144  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

on,  just  to  see  there  is  no  row.  Well,  a  man 
can  bring  in  his  banjo  and  play — that  is 
Guthrie's  banjo  now.  And  Mrs.  Barstow  has 
lent  us  that  parlor  organ,  if  anybody  likes  to 
sing.  I  hate  parlor  organs  ;  I  call  them '  yang- 
yangs.'  But  there  is  no  accounting  for  tastes. 
And  the  little  pirates  hear  them  in  the  Sun- 
day Schools.  So,  if  they  like  them,  I  do." 

When  his  mother  went  home  she  made  the 
heads  of  all  the  Tens  of  King's  Daughters 
talk  to  their  companions  in  that  order,  and 
the  result  was  a  large  box  of  books  for  young 
people,  which  was  sent  to  the  "Public's 
Room." 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  145 


CHAPTER  XII. 

'T^HE  boys  on  whom  Eveleth  had  most  re- 
lied in  forming  the  club  which  was  thus 
made  at  home  were  those  who  had  been  with 
him  in  the  Catskills.  There  were  two  or 
three  others,  who  came  to  the  school,  green 
and  doubtful  as  to  their  homes,  who  were 
glad  to  enlist  in  the  new  society.  Perhaps 
their  mothers  had  some  doubt  how  it  would 
turn  out,  but  the  boys  made  such  golden  rep- 
resentations as  to  Eveleth's  skill  and  Harri- 
son's, that  the  mothers'  doubts  gave  way,  or 
they  pretended  that  they  did.  Eveleth  hardly 
knew  himself  to  what  extent  his  plan  of  the 
"  public's  room,"  or  the  "  neighborhood 
room,"  would  prove  of  any  use.  He  had 
read  of  Toynbee  Hall,  which  some  Oxford 
graduates  established  in  London,  in  the  hope 
that  they  might  see  more  of  "all  sorts  and 
10 


146  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

conditions  of  men  "  than  they  had  done.  It 
was  with  some  such  notion  that  he  had  ae- 
voted  one  room  of  the  fourteen  at  his  dispo- 
sal to  a  more  open  hospitality  than  would 
have  been  possible  in  a  common  boarding- 
house.  But  whether  anything  would  come 
of  it  Eveleth  did  not  know. 

What  happened  was,  as  usual,  the  unex- 
pected. In  bringing  together  the  boys'  books 
he  had  a  certain  notion  that  the  little  black- 
guards of  the  neighborhood  might,  in  some 
cases,  be  tempted  to  come  and  read.  He  had 
a  mission  class  of  boys  whom  he  had  organ- 
ized into  a  Ten  Times  One  Club.  He  had 
done  this  because  these  boys  "  felt  their  oats  " 
— felt  that  they  were  quite  too  big  for  a  cate- 
chism, and  doubted  whether  they  were  not 
too  big  for  Bible  lessons.  He  had  given 
them  an  idea,  therefore,  that  if  they  had  a 
club,  with  a  president,  and  secretary,  and 
treasurer,  they  also  might  be  of  some  use  to 
the  world.  If  there  was  to  be  a  club  there 
must  be  a  place  of  meeting ;  if  there  was  to 


FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


be  a  place  of  meeting  it  must  have  something 
to  do  when  it  met  ;  and  besides  having  some- 
thing to  do,  if  they  could  have  books  to  car- 
ry to  their  homes,  which  they  would  not  have 
had  otherwise,  there  was  at  least  one  tie  to 
bind  them  together.  So  he  had  brought  to- 
gether, as  he  had  showed  to  his  mother,  more 
than  a  hundred  books,  and  had  made  the  boys 
paste  on  the  inside  of  the  cover  a  card,  which 
stated  that  the  books  were  the  property  of 
the  Ten  Times  One  Club,  and  were  to  be 
lent,  to  be  kept  a  week,  and  then  punctually 
returned. 

He  had  arranged  with  the  boys  of  his  own 
class  to  meet  him  every  Monday  evening, 
and  these  were  the  boys  who  first  brought  in 
anybody  else  into  this  people's  club-room. 
It  proved  that  the  library  was  a  much  more 
popular  institution  than  Eveleth  had  thought. 
In  order  to  keep  the  rent  of  the  house  down 
he  had  gone  a  little  out  of  the  streets  in 
which  the  elect  of  New  Altoona  lived,  and 
had,  almost  without  knowing  it,  stumbled  upor 


148  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

quite  a  large  German  colony.  This  German 
colony  was  originally  recruited,  mostly  in 
New  York,  for  the  needs  of  a  certain  large 
factory  of  paper-hangings,  into  which  some 
Germans  had  made  their  way  at  the  begin- 
ning, and  from  which  they  had  written  to  one 
and  another  place  in  the  Fatherland,  to  call 
over  their  cousins,  and  second  cousins,  and 
kindred  generally.  The  wave  of  Teutonic 
emigration  having  thus  once  begun,  it  had 
been  generally  whispered  that  New  Altoona 
was  a  good  place  to  live  in,  so  that  probably 
a  fifth  part  of  the  population  of  that  universi- 
ty city  spoke  German  better  than  they  spoke 
English.  But  the  original  settlers  of  New 
Altoona  did  not  speak  German,  and  had  not, 
to  tell  the  truth,  a  great  deal  to  do  with  the 
new-comers.  They  knew  that  they  were  very 
decent  people — that  they  did  not  get  into 
rows,  or  otherwise  disturb  the  social  life  of 
the  place ;  but  it  must  be  confessed  that  the 
German  residents  lived  their  life,  and  the  old 
New  Altoonians  lived  their  life,  and  until  Eve- 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  149 

leth  made  his  settlement  in  their  section  there 
had  been  but  little  intercourse  between  the 
two  nationalities. 

Two  or  three  of  the  boys  in  Eveleth's  class 
were  from  this  German  district.  It  is  with 
the  young  people  in  the  public  schools  that 
the  intimacies  of  separated  classes  in  Amer- 
ica begin.  These  were  intelligent  fellows, 
with  the  quick  ear  for  music  and  the  well- 
trained  voices  which  one  almost  says,  belong 
to  their  nationality.  And  Eveleth  was  quick 
to  see  that,  in  the  arrangements  for  his  club, 
he  had  better  have  a  good  deal  of  singing,  in 
which  Carl,  or  Max,  or  Rudolph  were  very 
naturally  the  leaders.  The  leaders  lead  in 
such  things,  as  they  do  in  most  other  rela- 
tions of  human  life. 

It  happened  thus  that  the  Monday  evening 
club,  instead  of  being  a  sort  of  extraneous 
bore,  as  the  young  men  on  the  foundation 
supposed  it  would  be,  had  its  pleasant  side, 
which  attracted  to  its  meetings  more  than 
Eveleth  and  Friday,  the  two  who  had  volun- 


FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


teered  to  take  charge  of  the  room  for  that 
evening,  had  supposed.  The  machinery  of 
the  club  was  always  kept  up  :  the  roll  was 
called,  the  fines  were  paid  for  non-attendance, 
the  business  of  the  month  was  seen  to,  the 
members  were  called  upon  to  report  whether 
there  was  any  enterprise  of  public  spirit  in 
which  the  club  could  engage,  and  some  one 
gave  an  account  of  what  was  considered  the 
most  important  subject  in  the  politics  of  the 
day.  But  more  and  more  were  these  matters, 
which  were  on  the  regular  calendar,  hurried 
up  and  shortened,  in  order  that  the  boys 
might  come  round  the  "  yang-yang,"  as  Eve- 
leth  had  irreverently  called  it,  and  sing  to- 
gether. And  it  would  always  happen  that, 
when  this  period  came,  some  of  the  young 
men  of  the  Polytechnic,  who  were  really  the 
hosts  of  the  club,  would  come  in  from  the 
front  parlor,  and  would  join  in  the  singing, 
or  listen.  The  banjos  made  their  appearance, 
and  the  last  half  of  Monday  evening  was 
much  more  a  concert  than  it  was  a  club 
meeting. 


FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

'TTHERE  can  be  no  doubt  that  this  success 
of  Monday  evening  led  to  similar  suc- 
cesses, under  different  forms,  on  other  nights 
of  the  week.  At  the  beginning  of  the  winter 
the  Monday  night  club  was  the  only  regular 
organization.  But,  before  the  winter  was 
over,  Friday's  club  came  in.  It  met,  how- 
ever, on  Thursdays.  It  was  the  wreck  of  a 
base  ball  club  which  had  been  coached  and 
advised  by  Friday  till  the  weather  grew  too 
cold  to  play.  And  there  was  a  Saturday 
evening  club,  which  the  young  men  always 
called  the  "Terrors,"  from  a  tradition  that  it 
was  recruited  by  Guthrie  from  among  a  lot  of 
street  rowdies,  who  had  taken  the  name  of 
the  "Altoona  Terrors."  In  point  of  fact, 
there  were  one  or  two  of  the  Terrors  who 
had  been  lured  from  the  error  of  their  ways 


152  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

by  the  temptations  of  a  comfortable  room, 
good  checker-boards  and  dominoes,  and  by 
the  certainty  that  they  should  be  in  decent 
company.  Indeed,  it  would  not  be  fair  not 
to  give  Guthrie  credit  for  pretty  vigorous 
oversight  of  these  fellows,  and  a  determina- 
tion to  save  at  least  one  of  them  from  the 
temptations  which  clearly  had  been  too  much 
for  him  in  his  Arab  life.  With  these  three 
regular  organizations,  covering  three  even- 
ings of  the  week,  the  parlor  came  to  be  known 
by  the  neighbors  as  a  place  which  was  in 
some  sort  the  property  of  the  ward.  The 
neighbors  hardly  knew  how  this  was,  or  why  ; 
but  as  there  was  always  a  store  of  weekly 
newspapers  to  read,  as  generally  they  found 
there  the  morning  New  York  newspaper,  and 
the  evening  paper  of  the  town,  one  and  an- 
other father  of  the  boys  came  in,  at  first  un- 
der a  pretence  of  an  errand,  but  afterwards 
more  familiarly.  And  Eveleth  found,  to  his 
satisfaction,  that  he  was  giving  hospitality  to 
the  neighborhood  a  good  deal  in  the  way  that 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  153 

he  had  hoped  to  do,  while  he   had   hardly 
known  how  to  go  about  this  business. 

Meanwhile  the  young  men  found  that, 
without  knowing  it,  they  were  forming  com 
panionships,  and  in  some  cases  friendships, 
among  the  more  intelligent  of  the  workers  in 
the  factory.  Here  were  young  gentlemen  of 
good  artistic  taste  and  training,  who  had  no 
desire  to  push  themselves  upon  the  society 
of  the  Americans  of  the  town,  but  who  proved 
to  be  so  well-informed  in  more  of  the  fine 
arts  than  one,  that  the  students  at  the  Poly- 
technic were  glad  enough  to  come  into  close 
relations  with  them.  Especially  did  they  find 
sympathy  in  the  matter  of  music.  There 
was  hardly  one  of  the  Polytechnic  students 
but  thrummed  the  banjo,  or  could  play  a  few 
airs  on  the  piano,  or  sang,  for  better  or  for 
worse,  in  the  glee  club  of  the  school.  Some 
of  them  had  a  real  musical  temperament,  and 
went  farther  than  such  initial  experiments. 
As  their  acquaintanceship  went  on  with  their 
new  friends,  it  would  often  happen  that  the 


FOUR   'AND  FIVE. 


"yang-yang"  was  not  sufficient  for  their 
needs,  and  that  the  folding-doors  were  rolled 
back,  so  that  they  might  avail  themselves  of 
the  piano.  And  at  the  hours  when  this  was 
possible,  late  in  the  evening,  the  German 
gentlemen  were  able  to  entertain  them  with 
some  of  the  best  music  of  the  time,  rendered 
jwith  real  appreciation. 

Out  of  these  intimacies  grew  up  a  habit 
which  gave  to  the  neighborhood  room  its 
largest  constituency.  For  every  Sunday  af- 
ternoon, after  the  different  chapels  and  Bible 
classes  were  over,  one  and  another  of  the 
leaders  of  the  music  fell  into  the  habit  of 
dropping  in  to  see  whom  he  might  meet  at 
the  club-room.  And,  naturally,  such  a  clus- 
ter of  visitors  would  gather  round  one  or  an- 
other instrument,  and  sing  together.  It  did 
not  happen  long,  that  there  was  such  singing 
by  four  or  five  of  the  best  voices  in  New  Al- 
toona,  before  one  or  another  of  their  friends, 
ladies  or  gentlemen,  liked  to  come  in  to  hear 
them. 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  155 

These  did  not  come  in  to  hear  them  for 
many  Sunday  afternoons  before  a  chorus  was 
formed  from  them,  of  voices  not  unused  to 
singing  with  others ;  so  that,  before  Christ- 
mas time,  here  was  an  unorganized  musical 
society,  which  could  rely  quite  confidently 
upon  meeting  together  on  Sunday  afternoons, 
and  which  gradually  arranged  itself,  under 
the  natural  lead  of  those  who  could  lead  best, 
for  the  performance  of  more  than  the  simple 
psalm-tunes,  or  other  music,  with  which  they 
had  begun.  The  young  gentlemen  who  had 
unwittingly  founded  a  musical  society  in  this 
way  were  glad  enough  to  welcome  such  visit- 
ors. 

They  made  it  the  occasion  for  their  reg- 
ular receptions  of  the  friends  in  the  town 
who  had  been  kind  to  them.  They  compelled 
Cornelia,  who  was  the  matron,  housekeeper, 
stewardess,  and  woman-of-all-work  of  their 
establishment,  and  who  was  by  no  means  un- 
willing to  extend  its  hospitalities — they  com- 
pelled her  to  furnish  a  cup  of  tea  and  a  biscuit 


156  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

for  anybody  who  came,  and  for  themselves, 
found  themselves  gladly  in  the  position  of 
hosts  of  a  large  and  pleasant  company  as 
every  Sunday  evening  came.  In  such  mat- 
ters it  seems  almost  impossible  to  begin,  but 
after  a  beginning  has  made  itself,  by  one  or 
another  accident,  such  institutions  grow  with 
their  own  success.  If  they  do  not  succeed, 
by  a  very  natural  law  they  die.  But  so  it 
happened,  in  this  case,  that  there  grew  up,  as 
the  winter  went  on,  a  very  pleasant  gather- 
ing, once  a  week,  of  all  sorts  and  conditions 
of  men,  as  in  the  week-day  evenings  the 
young  men  had  brought  together  quite  a  large 
colony  of  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  boys. 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  1 57 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

TT  happened,  in  the  early  part  of  the  winter, 
that  the  Polytechnic  boys  had  challenged 
the  boys  of  the  Military  Seminary,  at  Auster- 
litz,  ten  miles  above  them  on  the  river,  to  a 
contest  of  ice-boats,  five  on  a  side.  The 
greatest  interest  was  felt,  not  only  among 
the  boys  of  the  school,  but  by  the  people  of 
the  two  towns,  in  the  contest.  Harrison 
was  the  commander  of  the  Halcyon,  a  boat 
which  carried  three,  and  was  rated  for  the 
purposes  of  the  race  as  in  class  No.  2.  The 
rule  was  strict  that  she  must  carry  three  pas- 
sengers, but  the  weight  of  these  three  was 
not  prescribed.  Harrison's  party  had  been 
made  up  long  ago.  Beside  himself  he  had 
Guthrie,  who  was  as  good  a  fellow  on  the  ice 
as  he  was  himself,  and  little  Flower,  rather  a 
pet  of  all  of  them,  a  fifth-class  boy.  It  was. 


FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


said  of  Flower  that  when  he  was  cold  Harri- 
son put  him  in  his  ulster  pocket  and  carried 
him  home.  This  was  not  true.  And  Flower 
was  in  no  sort  a  milk-sop  or  baby.  But  he 
was  small,  it  must  be  confessed.  And  when 
his  weight  was  asked  by  the  reporters  for  the 
press,  and  Flower  told  them  to  guess,  they 
put  him  down  as  "  low  in  the  forty  ounces." 
The  truth  was  that  he  hardly  weighed  one 
hundred  and  ten  pounds.  Now  as  Harrison 
and  Guthrie  between  them  weighed,  with 
their  winter  rig,  fully  three  hundred  and 
thirty,  it  was  generally  believed,  in  the  deli- 
cacy to  which  such  calculations  are  carried, 
that  little  Flower's  light  weight  made  him 
one  of  the  most  essential  members  of  the 
Halcyon's  crew. 

Harrison  himself  did  not  share  in  this  her- 
esy, nor  did  Guthrie.  They  said  that  the 
Halcyon  would  carry  old  Porpoise  himself, 
and  beat  any  boat  the  Lobster  Heads  could 
bring  round  the  point.  "  Lobster  Head  "  was 
a  familiar  name  attached  to  the  military  stu- 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  159 

dents,  from  the  color  of  the  caps  they  wore. 
But,  for  all  this,  Harrison  knew  perfectly  well 
that  his  friends  in  the  school,  who  were  per- 
fectly determined  that  the  Halcyon  should 
take  the  cup  in  the  number  two  races,  at- 
tached great  importance  to  the  determination 
he  had  early  announced  to  take  Flower  as 
his  able-bodied  seaman.  He  was  the  captain, 
Guthrie  was  the  lieutenant,  and  Flower  was 
rated  as  able-bodied  seaman,  or  crew. 

It  was,  therefore,  with  a  dismay  only  second 
to  what  he  would  have  felt  had  some  one 
told  him  that  the  mast  of  the  Halcyon  had 
been  cut  up  for  fuel,  that  Harrison  heard  an 
announcement  from  Flower,  as  on  the  morn- 
ing of  the  fatal  Saturday  he  ran  in  to  the  one 
recitation  of  the  day,  an  exercise  with  old 
Porpoise,  who  was  the  modern  language  pro- 
fessor, and  with  whom  they  were  reading 
Hermann  and  Dorothea. 

Flower  was  standing  on  the  steps.  "  Oh, 
Harrison,  I  can't  tell  you  how  sorry  I  am. 
But  here  is  the  telegram.  My  grandmother 


I6O  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

is  dead,  and  I  am  to  take  the  11.30  train 
home.  I've  got  to  go,  Harrison  !  " 

It  was  a  supreme  moment  for  Harrison, 
and  he  came  through  it  magnificently.  If  an 
instant  of  what  might  have  been  rage  swept 
over  him,  he  never  even  told  of  it  afterwards, 
and  it  did  not  show  itself  on  his  face.  His 
face  simply  showed  sympathy  with  the  boy. 

"  My  poor,  dear  boy,"  he  said.  "  I  am  so 
sorry,  and  only  yesterday  you  showed  me 
that  funny  letter  from  her.  Let  me  come 
and  help  you  pack  your  traps." 

The  boy  was  wholly  melted  by  Harrison's 
sympathy,  and  only  at  this  moment  did  he 
shed  a  tear. 

"  Oh,  no,  Harrison,"  said  he,  "  the  other 
fellows  will  get  them  to  the  train.  I  said  I 
would  run  round  here  so  that  you  might  be 
thinking  what  you  could  do." 

"  Never  mind  me,  dear  boy,  never  mind 
me,"  said  Harrison.  "  You  shall  see  in  the 
paper  that  we  have  beaten  them  out  of  sight." 
And  he  squeezed  little  Flower's  hand  so  that 


FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


the  bones  almost  broke  into  little  pieces,  but 
so  that  Flower  was  delighted  all  that  day. 
Harrison  did  not  kiss  the  child,  as  he  was 
tempted  to  do,  because  he  was  afraid  he 
might  not  like  it.  But  Flower  went  off  on 
his  sad  ride,  sure  that  he  had  the  sympathy 
of  the  head  of  the  school,  and  with  such  pride 
as  fourteen  medals  and  fifteen  diplomas  would 
not  have  given  him. 

And  Harrison  was  left  to  vary  the  dialogue 
in  Herman  and  Dorothea  with  speculations 
as  to  who  there  was  whom,  at  a  moment's  no- 
tice, he  could  get  to  take  the  place  of  little 
Flower. 

The  good  genius  of  the  Halcyon  guided 
him  after  all.  When  at  last  old  Porpoise's 
sixtieth  minute  had  crawled  by,  and  when  he 
had  said,  "  I  will  now  excuse  you,  shentlemen  ; 
but  I  wish  we  had  a  few  minutes  more,  dat  I 
might  read  to  you  a  short  letter  which  on  dis 
occasion  Goethe  wrote  to  his  friends  in  Stutt- 
gar," — when  he  had  looked  round  expecting 
the  class  to  stop  and  ask  him  to  do  so,  and 
ii 


1 62  FOUR  AND  FIVE, 

when,  instead  of  this,  they  had  rushed  madly 
down  stairs,  then,  and  not  till  then,  could 
Harrison  run  to  the  bursar's  to  ask  where  a 
certain  lad  named  Little] ohn  boarded,  whom 
he  had  seen  at  the  ball  ground.  Littlejohn, 
also,  was  one  of  the  new  boys.  The  bursar, 
it  need  hardly  be  said,  was  out,  and  his  as- 
sistant, Miss  Bothers,  knew  nothing — on  that 
subject. 

"  Nor  on  any  other,"  said  Harrison,  bitter- 
ly, to  himself,  as  he  stood  on  the  steps  of  the 
office,  and  looked  south  and  looked  north, 
wondering  what  bursars  did  on  Saturday 
mornings,  and  where  they  regaled  them- 
selves. It  was  at  that  moment  that  the  good 
genius  of  the  Halcyon  sent  a  baker's  boy  in- 
to the  street  with  some  rolls  for  an  afternoon 
tea  which  the  bursar's  wife  gave  to  the  Soro- 
sis  of  the  city.  In  an  instant  all  sorrows 
were  ended.  For  Harrison  knew  the  boy. 
He  was  one  of  the  music  club.  He  had  been 
retained  because  of  the  exquisite  soprano 
which  some  one  had  noticed  at  a  school  exhi- 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  163 

bition.  The  boy  admired  Harrison  with  that 
sort  of  unspoken  enthusiasm  with  which  a 
drummer-boy  might  have  regarded  the  great 
Napoleon.  His  delight  may  be  conceived 
when  this  more  than  emperor  spoke  to  him. 

"  Why,  Sullivan,  is  that  you  ?  Sullivan, 
where  shall  you  be  this  afternoon  ? " 

"  Down  on  Front  Street,  Mr.  Harrison, 
where  Seventh  Street  comes  down  to  the 
wharf.  Mr.  Woodman  has  a  pile  of  boards 
there,  and  his  boy,  that's  '  Chip  Woodman'  's 
going  to  save  places  for  all  of  us.  We  shall 
seethe  Halcyon  when  she  doubles  Cat-Head." 

"  Then  you  can  get  off  from  Mr.  Whitbred." 

"  Oh  yes,  sir ;  he  is  going,  too,  with  Mrs. 
Whitbred.  Jem,  he's  to  drive.  They's  go- 
ing down  to  Cat-Head,  but  I'd  rather  be  at 
Woodman's  on  the  boards." 

"  Sullivan,  how  should  you  like  to  take  lit- 
tle Flower's  place  on  the  Halcyon  ? " 

Oh  !  the  bliss  of  Sullivan  as  he  was  made 
to  understand  that  the  question  was  not  chaff, 
but  that  the  great  man  of  the  day  had  offered 


164  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

to  him,  seriously,  in  the  street,  while  he  had 
the  rolls  in  his  basket,  the  opportunity  which 
could  not  fall  to  any  other  boy  in  town  ! 

And  the  light  heart  with  which  Harrison 
went  up  to  Flower's  lodgings  to  tell  him  that 
all  was  right,  and  to  borrow  an  ulster  from 
him,  so  that  little  Sullivan  might  not  be  cold  ! 
"  He  might  have  had  mine,  of  course,  but  if 
you  can  let  him  have  yours,  there's  no  need 
of  carrying  an  extra  pound  of  wool." 

So  little  Sullivan  was  entered  as  "  able- 
bodied  seaman  vice  Flower,  disabled."  So 
little  Sullivan  was  permitted  to  sit  forward, 
with  the  most  emphatic  injunction  that  he 
was  to  do  nothing.  He  was  not  to  wink, 
Guthrie  told  him,  except  when  the  wind  was 
W.  S.  W.,  or  quarter  west,  and  then  only 
when  he  was  sure  that  the  Hard-Scrabble  was 
a  mile  astern.  He  must  not  say  a  word,  and 
must  not  blow  his  nose  under  any  circum- 
stances. If  Guthrie  had  told  him  that  he 
must  stand  on  his  head  through  the  match, 
little  Sullivan  would  have  gone. 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  165 

Well  girt  in  Flowers's  extra  ulster,  he  re- 
ported at  the  moment,  and,  as  if  he  had  sailed 
on  ice-boats  since  he  was  born,  took  his  place. 
In  this  little  space  we  must  not  tell  the  story 
of  that  famous  match.  Only  that  as  they 
were  on  the  home-stretch,  after  they  had 
safely  passed  that  nasty  hole  by  the  Willows, 
Guthrie  undertook — not  to  brush  his  hair, 
indeed,  or  to  wink  more  than  he  shoud  have 
done,  but  actually  to  cross  the  boat — he 
never  could  tell  why.  He  caught  both  his 
heavy  boots  in  the  sheet  and  fell  heavily, 
dragging  the  sheet  so  hard  that  the  Halcyon 
at  once  felt  the  strain  and  keeled  over  as 
never  boat  did  keel.  Harrison  dragged  him- 
self to  the  weather  side  and  lay  on  it  at 
length,  and  Guthrie,  of  course,  tried  to  free 
himself.  But  there  were  ten  seconds  of 
awful  suspense  before  the  sail  fluttered  free, 
and  in  an  instant  more  fell  on  the  deck. 

Little  Sullivan  had  drawn  a  vicious-looking 
knife,  a  miniature  bowie  Guthrie  called  it, 
and  cut  the  sheet,  while  at  the  same  moment 
he  let  the  halyard  go. 


1 66  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

Of  course,  the  boat  lost  way.  She  would 
not  have  stopped,  in  a  mile,  at  that  speed. 
Of  course,  the  sheet  was  free  from  Guthrie's 
legs  in  an  instant,  and  was  knotted  again  in 
half  a  minute  more.  Up  went  the  sail,  and 
the  Halcyon  flew  as  before.  They  had  lost 
half  a  mile,  but  they  had  it  to  lose. 

"  I  am  afraid  little  Flower  would  not  have 
done  it,"  said  Guthrie,  as  he  told  the  story 
of  his  mishap.  I  am  afraid  he  does  not  carry 
a  sheath-knife  in  his  pistol-pocket." 

And  when  the  Halcyon  came  past  Cat- 
Head,  with  nothing  else  in  sight  for  thirty- 
seven  seconds,  when  she  flew  to  the  signal- 
flag,  who  so  proud  as  little  Sullivan  ?  And 
when  the  Polytechnic,  in  a  mass,  met  the 
three  victors,  there  were  three  chairs  in  which 
they  were  to  be  carried  above  the  heads  of 
the  rest,  and  little  Sullivan,  able-bodied  sea- 
man, was  in  one  of  the  three. 

"  He  says  '  I  done  it,'  and  he  says  '  them 
is,'  and  he  says  'we  be,'"  said  Harrison, 
"  but  he  knows  how  to  do  the  right  thing  at 
the  right  time." 


FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


And  as  able-bodied  seaman  he  was  one  of 
the  heroes  of  the  supper  which  the  school 
gave  that  evening.  It  did  not  in  the  least 
demean  him,  in  his  own  eyes  or  theirs,  that 
in  his  other  capacity  as  baker's  boy  he  had, 
in  successive  trips,  brought  the  rolls  and 
other  bread  which  made  a  part  of  the  enter- 
tainment. 


1 68  FOUR  AND  FIVE, 


CHAPTER  XV. 

/^VF  course,  after  this  adventure,  Guthrie 
and  Harrison  both  took  an  interest  in 
little  Sullivan,  which  hardly  anything  else 
could  have  inspired.  They  had  already 
known  his  name  as  a  member  of  the  Thurs- 
day Club,  who  had  been  received  at  the  in- 
tercession of  some  of  the  larger  boys  of  that 
company.  But  now  Harrison  made  it  his 
business  to  see  to  the  interests  of  the  "  little 
pirate,"  moral,  mental,  and  physical.  And,  as 
the  other  boys  said,  little  Sullivan  froze  to  him. 
Boys  who  are  passing  into  manhood,  any- 
where between  the  ages  of  fifteen  and  twenty, 
are  quite  too  apt  to  forget  that  they  are  the 
idols  of  smaller  boys,  and  may  do,  for  better, 
for  worse,  what  they  will  with  them.  The 
loyalty  which  Man  Friday  showed  to  Robin- 
son Crusoe,  as  father,  chief,  benefactor,  and 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  169 

companion,  all  in  one,  is  only  a  type  of  the 
loyalty  which  a  boy  of  twelve  or  thirteen 
bears  to  an  older  boy  who  is  steadily  and 
really  kind  to  him.  In  this  case  Harrison 
soon  found  that  little  Sullivan  hated  school. 
He  found  that  Mr.  Whitbred,  his  master, 
only  sent  him  to  school  because  the  law  of 
the  state  compelled  him  to  do  so.  There 
was  little  inducement  in  the  baker's  shop  to 
make  the  boy  persevere.  It  followed  that 
he  could  not  spell,  could  hardly  write,  hated 
to  read,  and  looked  at  the  multiplication  table 
as  being  the  sum  of  abominations.  But  Har- 
rison put  a  different  face  on  all  this.  He 
made  little  Sullivan  understand  that  if  he 
was  to  be  his  boy  he  must  not  leave  a  mes- 
sage with  the  washerwoman  to  say,  "  mistur 
harrison  wornts  his  things  toosdy."  He 
made  him  understand  that  the  whole  con- 
cern was  disgraced,  Polytechnic  school,  club- 
house, Halcyon,  and  able-bodied  seaman,  if 
they  did  not  all  do  all  their  work  as  a  gen- 
tleman does  it.  He  then  made  him  under- 


FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


stand  that  schools  were  a  necessary  evil,  for 
the  enabling  of  certain  persons  to  do  well 
such  things. 

If  Harrison  went  any  further  into  the  ex- 
planation of  the  need  of  study,  his  words 
passed  vainly  over  little  Sullivan's  ears.  But 
when  he  intimated  that  he  could  have  noth- 
ing to  do  with  little  Sullivan  if  he  did  not 
know  that  eleven  times  eleven  is  a  hundred 
and  twenty-one,  little  Sullivan  said,  with  the 
tears  in  his  eyes,  that  he  would  do  anything  at 
school  that  the  mistress  told  him,  if  Mr.  Har- 
rison would  show  him  how.  And  it  ended 
in  Harrison's  giving  the  little  cub  twenty 
minutes  or  half  an  hour  every  evening  after 
Sullivan  had  carried  round  the  evening  rolls, 
and  in  Outline's  taking  the  same  time  with 
him  if  Harrison  was  away. 

They  taught  the  boy  how  to  study,  an  ac- 
complishment omitted  in  most  schools.  They 
taught  him  what  he  was  to  learn,  a  duty 
omitted  by  most  "teachers."  The  general 
process  of  what  is  called  education  consists 


FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


in  giving  a  boy  a  book  and  telling  him  to 
learn  what  it  contains.  A  teacher,  on  the 
other  hand,  sits  down  with  the  boy  and 
teaches  him.  Little  Sullivan  had  the  blessing, 
for  three  hours  of  his  life  every  week,  of  the 
personal  presence  and  inspiration  of  two 
young  men  who  wanted  to  teach  him.  He 
learned  more  every  day  from  them  than  he 
learned  in  his  six  hours  at  school.  Best  of 
all,  he  began  to  have  some  self-respect,  he 
learned  that  a  baker's  boy  is  just  as  impor- 
tant a  person  in  the  make-up  of  human  society 
as  the  captain  of  the  eleven,  if  he  choose  to  do 
perfectly  well  the  business  which  is  entrusted 
to  bakers'  boys. 

What  followed  next,  as  has  been  intimated, 
was  his  loyal  surrender  of  such  faculties  as 
he  had,  in  any  moment  of  time  which  he  had, 
to  Harrison.  Before  breakfast  little  Sullivan 
was  in  the  reading  room,  hoping  for  a  word 
or  nod  from  Harrison,  and  only  too  glad  if  he 
might  take  a  parcel  to  the  express,  or  a  de- 
layed letter  to  the  post  office.  When  the 


FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


Thursday  Club  met,  here  was  little  Sullivan 
arrayed  on  the  side  of  order,  and  by  the  same 
inspiration  by  which  Lamartine  worked  a  like 
miracle  in  creating  the  Garde  Mobile.  It  was 
no  harm  to  Harrison,  Guthrie,  Friday,  and 
the  rest  of  the  Polytechnic  young  men,  to  see 
that  the  members  of  that  school  were  not  the 
only  persons  in  the  world,  and  to  learn  that 
while  the  trustees  of  the  school,  the  gentle- 
men who  endowed  it,  the  teachers,  and  the 
rest  of  mankind  were  doing  what  they  could 
to  provide  a  first-rate  education  for  the 
scholars,  those  young  gentlemen  themselves 
had  some  duties  toward  the  rest  of  the  world. 
Before  the  winter  was  over  several  such  al- 
liances had  been  formed  between  the  first-class 
men  and  the  "little  fellows."  You  would  see 
a  first-class  man  down  on  the  sand-lots  in  the 
spring,  coaching  the  little  fellows  as  they 
played  rounders,  and  making  the  game  de- 
velop into  scientific  base-ball.  And  this  was 
not  from  a  general  notion  of  philanthropy, 
or  from  a  sense  of  duty  worked  out  in  any  fit 


FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


of  resolution-making.  Each  young  man  who 
took  up  such  an  enterprise  did  it  because  he 
had  formed  a  personal  friendship  with  some 
lad,  who  had,  perhaps,  never  had  a  kind  word 
spoken  to  him  before  by  a  boy  who  was  his 
superior  in  age,  in  opportunities,  and  in  social 
standing.  And  it  was  thus  that  it  happened 
that,  when  the  school-term  was  at  last  finished, 
and  they  gathered  on  the  landing  for  the 
steamboat  which  was  to  take  them  on  the 
first  stage  on  their  journey  to  the  Four-and- 
Five  camp,  not  only  all  the  Polytechnic  fel- 
lows of  that  club  met,  with  their  guns,  rods, 
camp-stools,  and  other  equipage,  but  that 
each  one  of  them  had  a  smaller  satellite 
among  whom  little  Sullivan  was  recognized 
as  a  sort  of  chief,  to  be  distinguished,  indeed, 
by  the  neatness  of  his  dress,  and  the  almost 
military  precision  of  his  bearing.  And  these 
five  boys,  by  one  device  or  another,  were  to 
have  a  long  summer  holiday  with  the  you^g 
men  from  the  Polytechnic,  in  their  camp  in 
the  Kaatskills 


174  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

"  Sullivan,  have  you  a  bowie  knife  in  your 
trousers  pocket  ? " 

"  Oh !  Mr.  Eveleth,  you  know  I  would  not 
carry  such  a  thing ! " 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  17 S 


CHAPTER  XVI. 

'"T^HE  camp  was  just  in  the  edge  of  the 
forest.  Since  the  boys  first  went  up 
there,  there  had  been  a  good  deal  of  wood 
cut  and  hauled  away.  But,  fortunately  for 
them,  their  own  special  foraging-ground  had 
not  been  much  molested.  And  Friday,  Har- 
rison and  Guthrie,  who  were  on  the  ground  a 
day  before  the  others,  cleared  out  the  brush 
and  rubbish  a  little  east  of  the  ground  they 
had  held  the  year  before,  so  that  they  had  al- 
ready four  tents  standing  when  the  advance 
of  the  great  party  arrived  from  Rickett's. 
Their  numbers  were  so  large  now  that  there 
were  to  be  eleven  tents  in  all,  besides  the 
great  foresail  doubled,  which  had  been  bought 
from  a  canal  man,  and  served  as  an  awning 
or  a  shelter,  as  the  case  might  require,  when 
they  were  at  breakfast,  dinner,  or  supper. 


FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


"There  will  be  these  two  streets,"  said 
Guthrie,  "running  back  from  the  clearing, 
and  on  each  side  of  each  street  three  tents. 
Here  and  here  will  be  two  tents  more,  and 
all  the  tents  have  come.  And  there  are  two 
tubs  full  of  tent-pins,  and  here  are  four  or 
five  mallets  that  Friday  and  I  made  yester- 
day. Try  to  keep  the  tents  as  near  the  lines 
as  you  can,  because  it  makes  the  whole  more 
ship-shape,  but  if  there  is  a  rock  in  the  way, 
why  —  there  is  a  rock  in  the  way,  that's  all." 

Such  were_the  commands,  and  almost  all 
the  commands,  which  were  given,  Guthrie's 
authority  being  simply  that  of  the  person  who 
knew  most  about  the  business,  had  taken  the 
most  pains,  and  one  of  those  who  were  first 
upon  the  ground.  The  first  group  fell  in  and 
went  to  work,  the  old  boys  showing  the  ten- 
derfeet  what  must  be  done,  and  as  a  second 
set  arrived  they  found  their  work  and  their 
places.  The  tents  had  all  been  hauled  up 
from  the  station  when  the  first  boys  came. 

The  next  morning  Guthrie  and  Harrison 


FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


and  Friday  issued  these  general  orders,  which 
Guthrie  read  from  the  head  of  his  table  under 
the  doubled  fore-sail. 

GENERAL  ORDERS. 

CAMP   FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

1.  As  there  is  no  general  no  one  can  give 
commands. 

2.  As  there  are  thirty-nine  good  fellows 
here,  the  common  sense  of  most  will  show 
the  need  of  some  system. 

3.  There  are  four  horses,  and  only  four, 
within  three  miles  of  us.     All  the  owners  are 
glad  to  let  them,  but  it  is  desirable  that  we 
shall,  among  ourselves,  understand  who  shall 
hire  them,  so  that  no  fellow  may,  without 
meaning  to,  break  up  another  fellow's  plans. 

4.  The  fishing-tackle,  the  axes,  the  fixed 
ammunition,  and  other  things  which  belong 
to  the  club,  must  be  under  somebody's  care. 

5.  Lots  will  therefore  now  be  drawn  for  an 
"officer  of  the  day."     The  officer  of  the  day, 
will  have  an  office  in  the  public  tent,  Choctaw, 
and  he  must  be  there,  or  have  some  other 
fellow  in  his  place,  to  know  what  has  become 
of  the  tools,  and  to  tell  about  the  horses. 

12 


FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


To-morrow  another  lot  will  be  drawn,  and  so 
on,  till  every  fellow  has  been  officer  of  the 
day.  But,  for  the  first  week,  none  of  the 
new  fellows  will  have  to  be  officer  of  the  day, 
because  they  do  not  yet  know  how. 

This  "general  order"  Guthrie  read,  with  a 
good  deal  of  fun.  The  boys  were  not  taken 
by  surprise.  Since  their  numbers  had  en- 
larged so  much,  they  knew  that  they  must 
have  some  method  in  their  affairs,  and  this 
was  their  simple  government.  It  worked 
perfectly  well  through  the  whole  summer, 
and  they  found  they  needed  no  other  rules 
of  administration. 

The  new  members,  younger  or  older,  soon 
fell  into  the  simple  habits  of  camp-life.  It 
could  hardly  be  said  that  any  one  was  detailed 
to  cook  or  any  one  to  set  the  table,  though  in 
fact  some  watchful  care  was  given  that  these 
pleasures  should  change  hands,  and  every- 
body have  his  chance  at  them.  Some  of  the 
new-comers  had  been  in  other  camps  where 
they  faced  nature  as  our  boys  did  not,  and 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  1/9 

had  more  to  teach  than  to  learn.  But  nobody 
was  "set  up,"  everybody  stuck  to  the  mot- 
toes, and  therefore  bore  his  brother's  burden 
as  well  as  his  own,  and  they  found  that  every 
one  shared  his  brother's  pleasure,  and  doubled 
his  own. 


FOUR  AND  FIVE* 


CHAPTER  XVIL 

TF  Ned,  who  is  now  the  secretary  of  the 
dub,  ever  publishes  its  records — and  I 
wish  he  would — we  shall  know  what  they  did 
in  the  next  fifty  days.  The  record  fell  to  the 
officer  of  the  day.  He  made  it  up  by  the 
camp-fire,  after  supper,  calling  across,  from 
one  to  another,  for  information,  and,  as  may 
be  imagined,  picking  up  a  good  deal  of  chaff 
in  reply.  There  were  present,  "ready  for 
duty,"  when  the  tents  were  all  pitched,  the 
nineteen  who  had  parted  last  year,  and,  to 
the  great  joy  of  all,  "  Inez,"  Blondin  Coram's 
pard.  But  Inez,  who  had  the  right  to  invite 
a  new  member,  had  not  brought  any  one  with 
him.  The  boys  made  a  great  favorite  of 
Inez.  Such  a  queer  name  it  was  for  a  man ! 
But  that  he  did  not  understand.  There  was 
nothing  he  did  not  know  about  roughing  it 


FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


And,  on  the  other  hand,  naturally  enough, 
there  were  things  in  which  he  was  simple  as 
a  child,  and  hi  which  the  most  common  meth- 
ods of  life  amazed  him. 

Some  of  the  fellows  wasted  a  day  or  two 
in  digging  and  chopping  and  pulling  and 
hauling,  up  by  the  reservoir,  to  see  if  there 
were  any  more  gold  moidores.  It  was  quite 
in  vain  that  Eveleth  and  his  party,  who  had 
discovered  the  prize,  assured  them  that  those 
which  were  found  were  in  a  rotten  belt,  were 
hardly  under  ground  at  all,  and  that  every- 
thing indicated  that  this  was  all  the  store  of 
some  one,  traveller  or  hunter,  who  had  left  it 
here,  and  never  returned  to  take  it  After  a 
good  deal  of  useless  hard  work  the  new  ad- 
venturers came  to  the  same  conclusion.  Inez, 
on  his  part,  could  not  believe  that  the  Kaats- 
kills  did  not  contain  something  worth  pros- 
pecting for.  And  for  some  days,  for  the  first 
week,  he  led  off  parties  to  try  this  stream  or 
that.  They  brought  hi  a  few  stones,  rather 
heavier  than  the  average,  but  nothing  that 


1 82  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

satisfied  Blondin  or  his  pard.  Eveleth  re- 
cruited a  working-party  which  blasted  two 
ledges  which  ran  across  what  people  had 
come  to  know  as  "  Coram's  road."  Harrison 
and  Friday  started  a  fish-preserve  in  behind 
Hans  Clove,  and  there  were  many  minor  en- 
terprises. But,  as  Ned  said  one  night,  when 
he  and  his  party  brought  in  six  hundred  and 
seventeen  handsome  trout,  nothing,  in  the 
long  run,  "  panned  out  so  well  "  as  their  old- 
fashioned  prospecting  with  hook  and  line. 
Among  a  thousand  such  enterprises,  which 
must  not  be  recorded  here,  seven  happy  weeks 
went  by.  Some  of  the  fellows  tried  to  cram 
up  for  some  college  examinations  which  were 
pending.  But,  to  speak  in  general,  they  left 
the  cares  of  common  life  well  behind  them  ; 
they  found  what  the  world  was  and  what  it 
was  good  for,  they  did  not  think  God  far  off, 
and  their  lives  grew  larger  every  day.  They 
looked  up  and  looked  forward,  and  this  com- 
pelled them  to  look  outside  themselves,  and 
to,  "  Lend  a  Hand." 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  183 

Eveleth  and  Guthrie  had  to  leave  before 
the  end  of  the  encampment.  And  this  depart- 
ure was  made  the  occasion  of  a  great  farewell 
dinner.  Mah-mah  outdid  herself."  Old  Coram 
provided  two  giant  turkeys,  which,  as  he  de- 
clared, had  known  their  proud  destiny  from 
their  birth.  Friday  and  Tom  Persefant  had 
led  parties  to  preserves  of  trout  known  to 
none  but  them,  and  it  may  be  safely  said  that 
the  provision  of  the  finest  of  fish  was  inex- 
haustible, even  by  boyish  appetites.  The  ir- 
rigated farm,  which  was  in  its  perfection,  pro- 
duced sweet  corn  at  command  for  the  roasting 
by  the  Princess  and  her  satellites.  Among 
these  satellites  stood  prominent  a  niece,  taller 
even  than  the  Princess,  and  wonderful  to 
look  upon.  She  was  said  to  descend  on 
her  father's  side  from  Red  Jacket  himself. 
Whatever  her  attributes  of  command,  she 
knew  how  to  ingratiate  herself  into  the  sym- 
pathies of  such  a  crew  of  fishermen  and  hun- 
ters as  were  these  merry  men,  and,  all  through 
the  summer,  they  insisted  that  she  must  ac- 


184  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

cept  the  mottoes  and  be  chosen  a  member  ot 
the  dab.  As  "for  lending  a  hand,"  Cornelia 
Sisson  was  always  giving  the  use  of  two ;  as 
for  looking  out  and  not  in,  she  was  keeping 
the  run  of  the  buttons  of  thirty  and  more 
boys,  and  gave  little  time  indeed  to  her  own 
"  record,"  as  the  boys  said.  And  they  knew 
very  well  that  her  faith  in  God's  goodness 
was  unshakable,  and  her  vision  of  the  shining 
shore  unclouded.  While  all  this  is  said  of 
the  leaders  in  the  cooking  of  the  dinner,  it 
ought  to  be  added  that  three  years  of  picnic 
life  in  the  woodland  had  not  been  useless  for 
any  of  the  older  boys.  There  was  not  one 
but  could  fry  a  trout  or  roast  an  ear  of  corn 
or  a  tomato  to  perfection,  or  whose  hot  bis- 
cuits were  to  be  despised. 

Mr.  Geddes  had  come  up  from  Philadelphia 
with  a  store  of  twenty-five  Portuguese  moi- 
dores,  so  like  the  treasure-trove  of  last  year 
that  Eveleth  and  Guthrie  declared  that  he 
must  have  dug  them  from  another  birch  tree, 
and  cut  them  from  another  belt.  In  fact 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  185 

they  had  cost  him,  through  a  hanking  house, 
a  correspondence  with  Lisbon,  covering  two 
or  three  months.  The  Newburg  jeweler,  who 
made  the  badges  before,  had  skilfully  done 
the  same  service  again,  the  ribbons  were  cut 
and  rightly  folded,  and  twenty-five  were  ready 
for  new  members.  Before  the  company 
marched  into  the  dining  tent  Inez  and  the 
new  boys  were  told  that  they  were  to  be  initi- 
ated in  form  into  the  club.  The  older  boys 
sat  on  stumps,  or  lay  on  the  ground.  The 
new  fellows  stood  in  a  semi-circle,  half  sur 
rounding  them  and  Eveleth,  who  sat  on  the 
largest  stump  quite  in  the  middle. 

"  I  am  going  away  first,  fellows,"  he  said, 
"  so  they  say  I  may  give  you  your  medals 
and  receive  you  into  the  club.  Gentlemen, 
all,  we  will  repeat  the  mottoes."  So  the 
whole  thirty-nine  lustily  joined  in  shouting : 
"  Look  up  and  not  down,  look  forward  and 
not  back,  look  out  and  not  in,  and  lend  a 
hand."  "  You  have  heard  them  before,  fel- 
lows. No  one  would  have  asked  one  of  you 


1 86  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

to  come  here  if  he  had  not  known  you  could 
be  trusted  to  remember  them;  yes,  and  to 
remember  them  when  it  was  not  easy.  Now, 
I  say,  fellows,  I  am  glad  to  give  you  the 
badges,  but  it  is  no  good  taking  them  unless 
a  fellow  in  his  own  heart  promises  before 
God  that  he  will  get  some  other  fellow  to  do 
the  same,  and  that  fellow  must  get  another, 
and  so  on.  Don't  you  all  agree  to  that  ? 

And  he  stood  up,  and  all  the  big  boys  on 
the  stumps  and  on  the  ground  stood  up,  and 
they  cried  out,  "  All  of  us." 

And  the  new  boys  "caught  on,"  and,  led 
by  Inez,  they  cried  out,  "All  of  us,  all  of  us." 
So  Eveleth  called  them  to  him,  one  by  one, 
pinned  the  ribbon  to  each  boy's  shirt,  re- 
peated the  first  motto,  and  the  boy  repeated 
the  second,  Eveleth  the  third,  and  the  boy 
the  fourth,  until  all  were  decorated,  Inez 
first  of  alL 

Then,  with  great  ceremony,  the  thirty-nine 
proceeded  to  their  feast  Knives  and  forks 
clattered,  the  Princess  and  Cornelia  and  a 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  I?7 

lot  of  the  little  fellows  served  the  dinner,  and 
when  the  hunger  of  the  first  set  was  partly 
satisfied  they  took  their  own  places  and 
joined  with  the  others. 

When  at  last  great  bowls  of  early  apples, 
with  pears  and  peaches  and  some  grapes  that 
Tom  Tyler's  father  had  sent  down  from 
Brockport,  showed  that  the  feast  was  coming 
to  an  end,  Eveleth  stood  up  and  said  : 

"  Fellows,  I  have  to  catch  the  down  train, 
you  know,  so  I  shall  say  'good-bye'  now, 
though  I  hate  to.  tft  makes  it  worse  because 
I  shall  not  be  here  next  year,  and  you  know 
Harrison  will  not,  and  Friday  is  wanted  to 
talk  Spanish  to  them  off  there,  and  Geddes, 
oe  will  be  in  Japan.  But,  I  say,  fellows, 
some  of  you  will  be  here,  and  you  will  re- 
member us.  I  am  instructed  by  the  '  original 
Four'  to  make  over  all  then-  traps  to  the 
club,  to  be  administered  by  what  will  be  left 
of  the  'First  Five.'  And,  I  say,  fellows, 
whether  we  come  or  whether  we  go,  just  let 
us  take  the  club  with  us."  And  here  the 


1 88  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

others  clapped.  "  For  it  is  not  this  place 
merely,  though  we  have  such  good  times 
here;  it  is  that  we  never  quarrel  here,  we 
never  sulk  here,  and  no  fellow  is  mean  here. 
Now  that  is  not  merely  a  Kaatskill  dodge, 
it  is  a  good  deal  bigger  than  that,  and  it  is  a 
dodge  a  man  may  carry  with  him  to  school 
or  to  business.  He  may  carry  it  to  Japan, 
as  Geddes  will,  or  he  may  carry  it  to  Monte- 
video, as  Friday  will.  I  say  good-bye,  then, 
but  I  say  it  to  promise  that  I  will  stand  by 
the  club  and  the  mottoes,  wherever  I  go,  and 
before  three  years  are  passed  I  will  try  to 
make  some  other  good  fellows  stand  by 
them." 

The  others,  well  led  by  Guthrie,  sprang  to 
their  feet,  and  gave  him  three  cheers.  Then 
Guthrie  kept  his  feet  and  made  the  longest 
speech  which  had  ever  been  heard  from  him. 
He  said  that  he  also  should  not  be  there  an- 
other summer.  He  expected  to  be  in  the  Cor- 
dilleras of  Mexico,  where  he  was  engaged  by  a 
mining  company.  "  But  what  Eveleth  says, 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  189 

I  will  stand  to,"  said  Guthrie.  "I  do  not 
mean  that  I  am  sure  that  I  can  make  a  club 
in  Mexico,  with  a  parlor  like  what  we  had 
at  school,  or  that  we  can  meet  once  a  week 
and  call  the  roll  and  go  through  a  ritual.  But 
I  do  mean  that  I  and  my  new  friends  shall 
stand  by  each  other.  No  fellow  shall  get  off 
in  a  corner  and  sulk  or  be  lonely.  Whether 
we  have  a  ritual  or  not,  we  will  'look  out  and 
not  in,'  and  we  will  'lend  a  hand.'  And  I 
for  one  will  not  live  a  little,  twopence  half- 
penny life,  just  for  what  I  eat  or  I  drink,  or 
the  money  in  my  pocket.  God  will  help  me 
if  I  let  Him  help  me,  and  I  mean  to  live  in 
the  biggest  sort  of  life  there  is.  I  mean  to 
be  looking  forward  to  whatever  is  possible, 
instead  of  worrying  myself  about  what  I  did 
not  do  yesterday.  There  is  my  interpretation 
of  the  four  mottoes,"  said  Guthrie,  seriously. 
"  I've  tried  that  interpretation  for  three  years 
now,  and  it  has  never  failed  me.  With  God, 
for  man,  in  Heaven.  I  think  that  is  about 
the  whole  of  it." 


19°  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

"There  is  one  thing  I'm  sorry  for,"  he 
said,  after  a  rather  serious  pause.  "  Because 
we  have  not  kept  up  to  what  I  thought  we 
should  do,  and  to  what  at  the  beginning  of 
the  winter  I  said  we  would  do.  We  do  not 
count  forty,  as  I  hoped  we  might.  We  are 
only  thirty-nine.  Now  they  say  thirty-nine 
is  a  witches'  number,  and  a  lucky  number, 
and  perhaps  it  is,  but  I  think  forty  is  a  bet- 
ter number.  At  least,  I  am  sure  that  four 
times  ten  is  forty,  and  not  thirty-nine.  Now 
our  book  says,  'Ten  Times  One  is  Ten.'  So 
that  ten  times  four  ought  to  be  forty,  in  three 
years. 

"We  would  have  been  all  right  if  our 
friend,  Inez,  had  brought  another  pard  with 
him.  I  suppose  he  thought  he  could  not 
match  Blondin  Coram.  And  I  don't  think 
he  could."  Here  all  the  boys  clapped  and 
cheered.  "But  I  think,  perhaps,  Inez  will 
carry  a  badge  out  to  Montana  with  him  and 
start  a  Ten  there,  as  he  says  he  cannot  be 
here  next  summer." 


FOUR  AND  FIVE. 


The  assembly  approved  again,  and  Blondin 
led  Inez  forward  to  receive  from  Guthrie's 
hand  another  badge  beside  his  own.  As  the 
hand-clapping  died  away  it  was  observed  that 
the  little  boys  were  trying  to  persuade  Brian 
Bachmann  to  speak  for  them.  "Pitch  in, 
Brian."  "Stand  on  that  bench,  Brian." 
"  Don't  be  afraid,  Brian."  Eveleth  did  not 
know  what  was  coming,  but  he  cried  "  Order, 
order,  listen  all  to  Brian  Bachmann,"  and, 
after  he  was  started,  the  little  fellow  went 
forward  very  well.  "  If  you  please,  Mr.  Eve- 
leth and  Mr.  Guthrie,  the  new  boys  want  to 
name  the  fortieth  member.  We  want  to 
have  little  lame  Dodder  for  a  member,  and 
we  want  him  for  our  member.  Stand  up, 
Jerry,"  he  said  to  little  Dodder.  "  Don't  be 
afraid." 

And  Harrison,  who  was  six  feet  high,  took 
the  timid  little  fellow  in  his  arms  and  held 
him  up  so  that  all  could  see  him.  Poor  little 
Jerry  Dodder  was  a  lame  boy,  who  belonged 
in  the  poorest  shanty  at  the  crossing.  With- 


I92  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

in  a  week  he  had  found  his  way  to  our  camp, 
and  the  new  boys  had  petted  him,  and  let  him 
go  to  fish  with  them.  They  had  lent  him 
lines  and  hooks,  and  be  it  observed,  Jerry 
generally  caught  more  trout  than  any  two  of 
them. 

"  You  know  "  said  Brian,  proceeding  confi- 
dently, now  that  he  had  got  his  wind,  "  you 
know  there  is  that  about  '  the  highways  and 
byways.'  I  always  liked  that.  And  Jerry 
here  thought  he  never  saw  a  highway,  but  for 
byways,  he  can  hop  with  the  best  of  them. 
And  Mr.  Geddes  says  that  he  thinks  some- 
thing can  be  done  for  his  foot,  and  I'm  going 
to  take  him  to  Elmira  when  I  go  home.  And 
my  uncle's  a  doctor  in  the  hospital,  and  will 
help  me,  and  Mr.  Beecher  will  help,  and  we'll 
see  if  he  can't  be  made  better.  And  all  the 
boys  will  chip  in  so  there  will  be  money 
enough  to  bring  him  home  when  the  time 
comes." 

Poor  little  Jerry  was  crying,  and  Harrison 
was  crying,  and  I  believe  Eveleth  himself 


FOUR  AND  FIVE.  1 93 


was  crying,  when  Brian  Bachmann  had  fin- 
ished his  speech.  Everybody  sprang  to  his 
feet  and  cheered.  Harrison  brought  the 
little  fellow  up  to  Eveleth's  table  and  stood 
him  on  it,  and  Eveleth  kissed  him,  and  pinned 
the  ribbon  and  the  badge  upon  his  ragged 
jacket. 

"  We  have  our  fortieth  member,  fellows," 
cried  Eveleth;  "four  times  ten  is  forty." 
And  somebody  started  the  T.  T.  T.  song, 
which  they  sang  with  a  will,  holding  hands 
in  a  circle.  And  then  they  sang  one  verse 
of  "Auld  Lang  Syne."  And  then  Fred 
slipped  off,  brought  up  old  Coram's  wagon, 
and  took  Eveleth  and  Guthrie  to  the  train. 

Some  of  the  club  meet  every  summer  in 
the  Clove,  and  they  bring  new  fellows  with 
them.  But  the  original  forty  have  never  met 
again.  Geddes  is  in  Japan,  Friday  is  in 
Montevideo,  Fred  is  setting  up  sugar  ma- 
chinery in  Algeria,  Harrison  is  doing  the 
same  thing  in  the  Sandwich  Islands,  and 
12 


194  FOUR  AND  FIVE. 

Brian  Bachmann  is  living  with  his  uncle  in 
Hamburg,  and  goes  to  a  gymnasium.  So 
every  continent  has  a  representative  of  the 
First  Forty. 


THE   END. 


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A  BOOK  O'  NINE  TALES. 


BY   ARLO   BATES, 

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Certainly  had  he  done  nothing  else  the  present  volume  should  go  far  toward 
making  him  a  permanent  reputation. 

"  His  stories  are  bright  and  clever,  but  they  have  higher  qualities  than  wit  and 
cleverness.  They  have  the  enchantments  of  the  magician,  the  pathos  and  passion 
of  the  poet.  The  plan  of  the  volume  is  ingenious.  There  are  the  '  Nine  Tales,' 
and  they  are  separated  by  eight  '  Interludes.'  These  '  Interludes '  are,  practi- 
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Mr.  Bates  writes  smoothly  and  pleasantly.  His  stories  and  sketches  make 
very  entertaining  reading. 

"  A  Book  o'  Nine  Tales,"  by  Arlo  Bates,  whose  writing  has  been  familiar  in 
magazines  and  newspapers  for  several  years,  is  a  readable  volume  of  short  stories 
suited  to  the  light  leisure  of  summer  days  in  the  country.  There  are  really  seven- 
teen stories,  although  to  make  the  title  appropriate  Mr.  Bates  makes  every  second 
one  an  interlude.  They  are  simple,  gracefully  written,  unambitious  tales,  not 
calculated  to  move  the  emotions  more  than  will  be  comfortable  in  holiday  hours. 
They  are  short  and  interesting,  with  all  kinds  of  motives,  dealing  with  love  in 
every-day,  pretty,  tasteful  fashion.  A  weird  tale  is  "  The  Tuberose,"  which 
startles  one  a  little  and  leaves  a  great  deal  to  the  imagination.  The  book  will  be 
a  popular  seaside  and  country  volume. —  San  Francisco  Chronicle. 

"  A  Book  o'  Nine  Tales,"  by  Arlo  Bates,  who  has  become  very  popular  as  a 
writer  of  love  stories,  will  attract  much  attention  this  season  from  the  great  army 
of  readers  who  wish  for  "vacation  books."  These  nine  stories  are  capitally  told, 
and  are  arranged  in  a  novel  manner  with  interludes  between.  These  interludes 
take  the  shape  of  short  scenes,  arranged  as  if  in  a  play,  the  dialogue  sustained  by 
two  persons,  a  lady  and  gentleman,  which  give  an  opportunity  to  portray  and 
satirize  in  a  very  effective  manner  many  queer  society  customs,  superstitions,  and 
characters  familiar  to  every  one  who  mingles  with  the  world.  They  make  a  most 
amusing  array  of  characters,  that  seem  to  live,  so  true  they  are  to  human  nature. 
"  Mere  Marchette  "  is  a  gem  in  this  unusually  good  collection  of  literary  jewels. 
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A  VIOLIN    OBLIGATO 


BY  MARGARET  CROSBY. 

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A  noteworthy  dramatic  purpose,  acute  insight  into  the  recesses  of  individual 
character,  ready  command  of  the  motives  that  govern  the  relations  of  allied  or 
contradictory  natures,  a  persistent  recognition  of  the  essential  pathos  of  life  to 
those  who  look  beneath  its  surface,  and  a  versatility  of  style  that  easily  ranges 
from  grave  to  gay,  — these,  with  an  underlying  sense  of  humor  that  now  and  then 
blossoms  out  into  ample  radiance,  are  the  traits  and  qualifications  displayed  by 
Margaret  Crosby  in  "A  Violin  Obligate  and  Other  Stories."  The  strength  and 
scope  of  the  tales  brought  together  in  this  volume  are  indeed  remarkable ;  they 
touch  on  many  phases  of  human  existence,  and  they  appeal  to  something  more 
than  a  mere  desire  for  mental  distraction.  Most  of  the  productions  included  in 
this  book  have  a  clear  ethical  purport  ;  one  cannot  read  them  without  getting  new 
light  upon  personal  duty  and  realizing  the  force  of  the  decree  that  renders  every 
man  and  every  woman  responsible  for  the  influence  he  or  she  brings  to  bear  on 
others.  The  first  story,  "  A  Violin  Obligate,"  deals  with  the  fate  of  a  poor 
musician  in  whom  the  artistic  impulse  overbalanced  artistic  capability.  "  On  the 
South  Shore  "  and  "An  Islander"  have  their  scenes  laid  in  Nantucket,  a  region 
where  Miss  Crosby  is  apparently  very  much  at  home.  The  woman  whose  face  is 
her  fortune  is  the  central  figure  in  "A  Complete  Misunderstanding,"  and  the 
way  in  which  she  wrecks  the  happiness  of  two  men  is  related  with  no  attempt  at 
melodramatic  exaggeration,  but  with  a  straightforward  vigor  that  is  always  effec- 
tive. "The  Copeland  Collection"  has  a  delightful  savor  of  romance;  "Last 
Chance  Gulch  "  unfolds  exciting  episodes  in  the  life  of  a  Western  mining  camp : 
a  liaison  between  a  high-born  youth  and  a  beautiful  sypsv  'S  the  theme  of  "  A 
Mad  Englishman  "  ;  it  is  a  humble  fisherman  in  a  New  England  village  who 
turns  out  to  be  "  A  Child  of  Light ;  "  and  in  the  "  Passages  from  the  Journal  of 
a  Social  Wreck"  there  is  a  comedy  of  the  first  order.  It  is  seldom  that  one 
encounters  a  collection  of  short  stories  from  the  pen  of  a  single  writer  where  the 
interest  is  so  diversified  and  yet  so  well  sustained  as  in  this  volume  by  Miss 
Crosby.  The  talent  displayed  in  every  one  of  these  essays  in  fiction  is  incontest- 
able. They  will  take  rank  at  once  with  the  representative  work  of  the  foremost 
American  authors  in  this  important  field  of  contemporary  literature.  —  The 
Beacon. 


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A  QUESTION   OF  LOVE. 

of 


Translated  by  ANNIE  R.  RAMSEY,  from  the  French  of 

T.   COMBE. 

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The  scene  is  laid  in  Switzerland,  and  the  narrative  has  to  do  with  a  delight- 
fully original  family,  consisting  of  two  old  men  ( one  of  them  almost  a  centenarian ) ; 
a  spinster  housekeeper  of  quaint,  undemonstrative  manners  ;  an  elderly  servant, 
always  ready  to  speak  her  mind  on  the  slightest  provocation ;  and  last,  but  by  no 
means  least,  a  beautiful  girl  of  eighteen,  whose  loneliness  amid  these  surroundings, 
cut  off  from  all  companionship  with  persons  of  her  own  age,  is  forcibly  depicted. 
Pretty  little  Zoe,  with  her  shy  ways  and  her  tender  heart,  is  a  most  attractive 
character,  and  the  reader  will  not  wonder  that  Samuel,  the  honest  son  of  the 
neighboring  farmer,  falls  head  over  heels  in  love  with  her.  But  Samuel's  hopes  are 
doomed  to  disappointment.  All  the  characters  are  well  drawn,  and  among  them 
old  Brutus  Romanel  is  not  the  least  delightful.  His  one  ambition  is  that  he  may 
live  to  be  a  hundred,  and  he  comments  on  the  obituary  list  in  the  newspaper  with 
a  glee  that  would  be  disgusting  if  it  were  not  so  artless.  Miss  Ramsey's  transla- 
tion deserves  the  highest  praise  for  its  freedom  from  Gallic  idioms.  Here,  evi- 
dently, is  one  translator  who  believes  that  a  translation  into  English  ought  to  be 
written  in  the  English  language,  and  not  in  that  droll  Anglo-French  patois  which 
so  often  does  duty  for  English  at  the  hands  of  the  ignorant  and  incompetent  — 
The  Beacon. 

It  is  a  clean,  sweet-smelling  story,  a  great  relief  after  the  quantities  of  realistic 
stuff  produced  by  the  modern  French  school.  The  characterization  is  excellent, 
and  the  style  and  treatment  deserve  special  commendation.  It -is  a  pretty  and 
wholesome  love  story  that  recommends  itself  specially  to  the  attention  of  the 
maidens. 


Sold  by  all  booksellers,  mailed  on  receipt  of  price  by  the  publishers, 
ROBERTS   BROTHERS,   BOSTON. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  LOS  ANGELES 
THE  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 

This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below 


DATE  S 

MAY  06 

ILL  IC 

DUE3.M0NTHS 


1ECEIVED 


SEP 


ENT 

993 


FROM 


ANGELES 


PS 

1772  Kale  - 

Four  and- five. 


nut 


PS 

1772 

F82 


